If you were in an elevator and it was falling from a high distance and if it was possible to time your jump right before it hit the ground, would that prevent you from injury?

I really don’t know. I’m guessing that if the elevator was falling at a high speed, which it most likely would, jumping might almost be impossible. I could be totally wrong, but even if it wasn’t a matter of gravity effect, timing a good jump and using the strength to do so in what is likely three seconds would be pretty damn hard to do. And even if you managed to jump right before the impact, (which you’d have to know 100%) I’m not sure how much that would really minimize the injury.

Jumping would not help you, it is to do with the speed that you fall at minus the speed you can jump at. If you time your jump just right, you will hit the floor at 2–3kph less than if you did not jump. When you consider you are falling 16ft per second per second, you can soon see how jumping wont help much.

Instead of hitting the floor at say 70kph, you would hit at say 68kph, you will still die.

I would consider this something I know, and not a guess, but you can always be wrong.

Inertia will squish you like a deflated jelly, sounds like a depressed fluther user.
So unless you’re living in a loony tune cartoon…you’re fucked!

@poisonedantidote is mostly correct, mostly. Plus, if you are in freefall, you would be unable to jump.

Nope.

I liked that theory of jumping to avoid hitting the bottom until it was pointed out that if you were in the air as the elevator hit bottom, you would still hit bottom a second or two later with the same force as the elevator. The better result would occur if you could flatten yourself out on the elevator floor and take the force over the whole of your body at once. I’ve seldom been in an elevator that had enough room to lie down flattened out.