About the Physics of Bungee Jumping

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Remy Dou. I'm a science teacher here at Miami Christian School in Miami, Florida. Let's talk a little bit about the physics of bungee jumping. When considering bungee jumping there's a couple of forces that you have to think about. You have to think about the elasticity of the rope and you also have to think about the weight of the object tied to the rope. And in this case, a person. People usually just go bungee jumping for fun but there's a lot of safety requirements that go into bungee jumping and that's where the physics come into. The weight of the person is what determines how far down the person will drop. The other thing that determines how far down the person will drop is the rigidity of the bungee cord. Which actually has a name. It's called a spring constant. And the higher the spring constant the more rigid the bungee cord is. The lower the spring constant the less rigid. So you want a bungee cord that's not too rigid. And you don't want a bungee cord that's not rigid enough. Otherwise you'll hit the ground. So once you take into account the weight of the person, you take into account the rigidity of the bungee cord, then you can determine how far down a person's going to travel when they jump. And depending on the size of the person you can use different bungee cords with different rigidities to make sure that they don't hit the ground and that everything goes smoothly."