Physics of Skydiving: Andrew Horning at K12Live! (MIT Museum Second Fridays, 1-10-14) - Free Educational videos for Students in K-12 | Lumos Learning

Physics of Skydiving: Andrew Horning at K12Live! (MIT Museum Second Fridays, 1-10-14) - Free Educational videos for Students in k-12


Physics of Skydiving: Andrew Horning at K12Live! (MIT Museum Second Fridays, 1-10-14) - By MITK12Videos



Transcript
00:04 Yeah , so hi everybody , she said my name's
00:10 Andrew , Remember the skydiving club . So at MIT
00:15 we study a lot , but we would like to
00:17 have gone and sometimes that's crazy , kind of fun
00:19 uh , including skydiving . So I'm going to talk
00:23 a little bit about the physics of skydiving for about
00:25 10 minutes and then we actually have some skydiving equipment
00:28 , including a parachute that will hold up and show
00:30 how it works . And I've got a couple more
00:32 members of the skydiving club sitting in the back will
00:34 come up and answer some questions too . So moving
00:41 forward , uh , I want to talk just a
00:44 little bit about why you actually need to be smart
00:47 to throw yourself out of an airplane because it doesn't
00:49 necessarily sound like a smart idea , but I'm sure
00:52 the parents in the audience don't think it's smart at
00:54 all for kids to be going on an airplane ,
00:56 which it's not , you need to be 18 and
00:59 you need to get a license to do it because
01:01 it's pretty complicated , but there's a lot of physics
01:04 involved in this and we exploit it for our own
01:07 amusement when we jump out of a plane . So
01:09 really there are two major forces acting on you .
01:12 When you jump out of a plane , there's the
01:14 force of gravity which is pulling us down and that's
01:18 constant . The earth is a certain size and has
01:20 a certain amount of stuff in it . And that
01:22 pulls us down there . Uh , there's also the
01:25 force of drag because as you get faster and faster
01:29 there's wind pushing back up . So the total force
01:32 on a person falling through the sky in freefall is
01:35 actually both of those together . Um , so we
01:37 write in physics as the sum of those two ,
01:39 so gravity plus the drag force . So here's what
01:43 it looks like in real life when people compete .
01:45 There is competition Skydiving and they make formations and they
01:48 see how many they can make in a certain amount
01:50 of time . This particular team is really , really
01:53 good and they can do 50 and 35 seconds Club
01:57 , so they're all pushing against the wind to do
01:59 these formations , you'll see their feet sticking out ,
02:01 their arms sticking out there , doing some weird motions
02:04 that is all using the force of drag to reorient
02:07 their bodies to move up and down a little bit
02:10 to move forward and back so that they can make
02:12 all of these different formations . So it's all about
02:14 exploiting the forces that are working on you . So
02:17 it looks like they're floating a little bit , they're
02:19 actually falling towards the Earth . They're just really ,
02:21 really high up at this point , they're going about
02:23 120 mph . She's called terminal velocity and I'll talk
02:27 about that and how you can get there . So
02:30 the question is how fast you go get that a
02:33 lot . Um , it has to do with these
02:35 two forces gravity and drag . So if we write
02:38 down the equations for it , this gravity has a
02:41 couple parts to , it really is the mass of
02:44 the person or thing that's falling out of the sky
02:46 . So highway £150, that's my mask , my weight
02:51 . And that gets acted on by the force of
02:53 gravity , which is just relative to the thing that
02:57 you're calling towards . So in this case of the
02:58 Earth , if you're skydiving on the moon , you
03:00 can go slower because there's less traffic , then there's
03:04 another part . And this one is more complicated ,
03:06 which is the drag or the wind resistance from the
03:09 wind uh in the air as you fall through it
03:13 . So like when you go down the freeway in
03:15 your car and stick your hand out the window ,
03:18 you feel a force pushing back on it . That's
03:20 the exact same kind of force . And if you
03:22 write down a simple form of the equation for it
03:25 , it's got a shape component . So if I
03:27 spread out into the wind , there's more force on
03:29 me than if I tuck up into a ball ,
03:32 there's an area exposed to wind as well . So
03:34 like a similar sort of thing is if I'm really
03:36 spread out and really tucked up tightly and then there's
03:40 a velocity component for speed . So the faster you
03:43 go , the more wind is pushing back against you
03:45 . So if you stick your hand out the car
03:47 window going down the road at five miles an hour
03:50 , There's a lot less force than if you're going
03:51 55 mph . So that's a velocity component that was
03:55 actually squared . So the speed really really matters .
03:59 So here's a break from the math and just more
04:01 sweet videos of people jumping out of airplanes . So
04:03 here you'll see him taking some different body positions that
04:07 allow them to direct the forces so that they can
04:09 actually fly forward a little bit or fly towards each
04:12 other . So again , there's still falling here .
04:14 They're probably going 150 mph . At this point ,
04:18 they're not wearing a suit , there's not a whole
04:19 lot of area exposed to the wind . Um and
04:22 they've got their arms back . So there's actually force
04:24 pushing this direction as well as back up and believe
04:27 it towards the ground . So like I said ,
04:32 there is a point where you can't go any faster
04:34 . So it's called terminal velocity . You get there
04:36 about 15 seconds into a skydive . We skydive during
04:40 free fall for maybe 50 seconds before we golden parachute
04:43 . We got up to about 120 miles an hour
04:46 and then you don't go any faster . You're still
04:48 following , you're still going really quickly or you're not
04:50 going any faster than 120 . And that's because when
04:54 you hit terminal velocity , the force pushing back up
04:56 on you is the same as the force pushing back
04:59 down on . So there's the down part which is
05:02 negative , that's gravity pulling you towards the Earth .
05:04 And then there's the up part that's positive , that's
05:07 the wind pushing back against you . And at terminal
05:10 velocity these have become the same . So when you
05:13 add them together , there's an up and a positive
05:15 part and a down part which is negative . When
05:17 you add the same number that positive and negative get
05:20 zero and there's no total force . So you're moving
05:23 in a quick speed but there's no acceleration anymore .
05:27 So here's a quick little graph of what it looks
05:30 like When you jump out of a plane for the
05:32 1st 20 seconds or so in blue is the velocity
05:35 of the speed in miles an hour . It goes
05:38 from zero to negative 120 . The negative for us
05:41 , physicist is meaning that it's pointing us down .
05:44 So you get up to about 120 and you'll see
05:47 you don't get any faster than that after about 20
05:49 seconds . This is the acceleration plotted up here ,
05:52 so it gets toward zero when your terminal velocity you're
05:56 not going any faster . So when you start off
05:59 , you have gravity just pulling you down . Then
06:02 the overall total force is just the gravity heart and
06:06 is pointing down as we jump out , The drag
06:09 starts kicking in and it goes up and the total
06:12 force disappears until there's none And then you're not going
06:16 120 mph and not going any faster . So I'll
06:19 play that again . Just watch the ball through along
06:22 the line . So if you're really speeding up And
06:25 now it slows down in terms of the rate of
06:27 change and you get stuck at 120 mph because there's
06:31 so much wind pushing back against you , you can't
06:33 go any faster . Mhm . Uh then of course
06:37 at some point you want to open the parachute so
06:39 that you don't hit the ground at 120 mph .
06:42 And what that does is it just adds extra dread
06:45 . So that's three an arrow pointing up . You
06:48 had a whole bunch more area above your head and
06:51 then there's a whole bunch more drag if you slow
06:53 down so that it doesn't pull you upward . It
06:57 just keeps you from going down as fast . So
07:00 now you've got a bunch more drag and then you
07:03 do gravity and you decelerate just by opening up more
07:07 area to be like spreading your body extra extra wide
07:10 . Except here you're just doing a fabric and you
07:14 can get a little added benefit from the fancy new
07:16 parachutes because they do get some lift like an airplane
07:18 wing so you can actually control these things and floods
07:21 very precisely once they're opened up like that and land
07:24 wherever you want , mm hmm . And then of
07:27 course people get fancy , you don't have to do
07:29 it on your stomach . These people can go ahead
07:31 first feet , first , any sorts of body positions
07:34 like that are controllable at this point , there's not
07:36 as much area exposed to the wind . It's mainly
07:39 just his head on his shoulders and maybe a bit
07:41 his leg . So he's probably going to 100 miles
07:43 an hour at this point because there's a lot less
07:46 drag . He eventually stops going any faster . But
07:49 when he gets to that point It's a lot it's
07:53 a higher speed . So it's like 200 mph for
07:56 these sorts of people and you can push against that
07:58 wind once you've got it up there and flip over
08:00 move forward move backward all just by using these forces
08:03 that you've got in the sky pushing back against you
08:08 . Yeah . Mhm . Yeah that's all they had
08:15 in terms of presentation . Um We'll bring up actually
08:18 a parachute and some equipment and you guys can ask
08:20 you some questions because we've got about five or 10
08:23 1 minutes . If you have questions about scott .
08:25 Having want us to walk you through a parachute looks
08:27 like um One question we get a lot . I'm
08:31 wearing one of these jumpsuits . You don't have to
08:33 be wearing a jumpsuit . It just gives us a
08:35 more reliable thing for the wind to push against and
08:37 so it's easier to do formations and I have more
08:42 reliable service push against . Yeah . I'll point out
08:46 how these guys work . So this is actually two
08:48 parachutes in a container like this . There's a main
08:51 one down here . That's what you would open up
08:53 and if anything goes wrong , which doesn't happen very
08:55 often . But we want to be extra careful because
08:58 we're plummeting towards the ground at 120 miles an hour
09:00 . There's a backup one up here . So it's
09:04 possible if the main one has something wrong with a
09:07 little tear , gets tangled to get rid of the
09:09 main parachute and go immediately to the backup . So
09:13 there's a bunch of handles on this thing to open
09:15 the main one . You throw this one out into
09:17 the wind . It's got a tiny parachute on it
09:19 . It goes away from you and then it opens
09:21 up the big one as you saw in the video
09:23 . Then everything slows down because you've got a bunch
09:25 of extra drag . If the main one has a
09:28 problem , you can get rid of it with this
09:30 handle and then go to the back of one with
09:33 that handle . Of course , you're going 120 miles
09:35 an hour . So that's 1000 ft and 5.5 seconds
09:38 . So you want to be able to do that
09:40 pretty quickly . If anything's going wrong , we pull
09:43 the parachute about three or 4000 ft above the ground
09:46 . So you have maybe 20 seconds before you would
09:49 hit the ground if you want to do anything about
09:51 it . So these are really reliable . Way safer
09:55 than it seems now . There's a lot of technology
09:57 in these , uh , in addition now they put
10:00 computers in there that sends how high you are and
10:03 how fast you're going . It's his underneath his flat
10:06 up there . So if you passed out or forgot
10:09 to open the parachute , for some reason , there's
10:12 something seriously wrong , it would open it for you
10:15 because it knows how fast you're going and it knows
10:17 how high you are . So if you really had
10:22 to , it'll just open it for you right before
10:24 you hit the ground . So there's extra backups of
10:27 these things too . But yeah , it's not very
10:28 big . And then we of course learned to pack
10:31 these and properly care for them . And then all
10:34 the procedures for opening and closing them in the air
10:38 . We practice a bunch of times and that's really
10:40 what one looks like you don't see them . Does
10:44 anybody have any questions ? So once you open the
10:49 parachute , It really depends on the size of the
10:52 parachute and flight characteristics of it . Maybe you're going
10:55 towards the ground at 20 mph or so . You
10:59 can turn that lift or the the lift that you
11:01 have from the parachute into a stall . So you
11:05 can sort of pull it up right before you land
11:07 in the actual landing . You're not going great .
11:10 Basketball toys stepping off a table . There's something so
11:14 it sort of depends on how you're flying in pairs
11:16 . You can help me get . Yeah , Michael
11:22 , they have parachutes on the airplane . Yeah .
11:25 Let's just say the airplane line when you reach a
11:29 certain altitude , shouldn't they have those where people can
11:34 jump out and release the pressure on the plane and
11:37 then everybody jumped out . Yeah , fortunately , airplanes
11:41 are so well engineered that any situation where it would
11:44 be useful to have a parachute almost never happens .
11:47 Like there may be has been one or two airplane
11:50 incidents where parachute would have helped . So I think
11:53 that's really the reason it's just not worth it and
11:56 it does require , so it looks reasonably straightforward in
11:58 the videos . But even jump on your own ,
12:01 you need to do 25 skydives with instructors so you
12:05 learn how to stay stable and open the parachute correctly
12:07 so most people wouldn't know how to use them .
12:10 It's a rash . Yeah . Right . Uh ,
12:14 just add a little something that they're actually a lot
12:16 of instances of planes full of skydivers and having all
12:19 functions and the skydivers are wearing parachutes , but they're
12:22 not able to get out of the plane because it's
12:24 spinning so fast and what's the planes started really having
12:27 problems . It's going down you can't even get out
12:29 of it . So these are gonna experienced skydivers with
12:31 hundreds of thousands of jumps and they're already wearing parachutes
12:34 and they still aren't able to get a plane crashes
12:36 . So they're the one into the other question is
12:42 yet . Yeah . Yeah . Yeah we're regulated just
12:53 like airplanes are under a parachute . So there's specific
12:58 zones uh where you're clear to skydive . So we
13:01 typically go up near the new Hampshire border . There
13:03 is also a place in the orange massachusetts where people
13:06 go a lot uh you do have to check in
13:09 to with the FAA to let them know they're gonna
13:12 be skydivers mainly . So other airplanes don't fly through
13:15 the space all your parachute because they have engines and
13:18 we don't so they're going to win most of the
13:22 time . So you have to get it clear ,
13:24 you can do it in the most different places .
13:26 But like if they jump into a red sox game
13:28 , they've done that ahead of time and everybody knows
13:33 , Yeah , I was the computer sense of how
13:36 you are . You take that one sure . Yes
13:40 , there's actually a little pressure sensor in there .
13:41 Um so he says , while you're on the ground
13:44 at the start of your day , you turn it
13:46 on and it calibrates to that ground pressure and says
13:48 , okay , that is the ground model , wherever
13:51 you turn it on . Uh and then as you're
13:53 jumping , it senses the difference in the air pressure
13:55 and uses that to calculate what altitude you are above
13:59 the ground level , that you calibrated it . Um
14:02 and then it just tracks how fast that changes to
14:05 figure out how fast you're going down . And if
14:07 you're going down too fast and you're at like 1000
14:11 or 1500 ft off the ground , uh , then
14:14 fires a little explosive that actually bursts out your reserve
14:17 parachute . So you kind of calibrated on the ground
14:21 the whole every day . It's pretty Sergent . Yeah
14:25 . But yeah , it's all based on the fact
14:27 that there's less air pressure on top of thunder is
14:29 down here and it's not a whole lot . But
14:31 it's enough that we can sense it . And Banks
14:33 here has actually built his own altimeter because he's a
14:38 mechanical engineer does all this time . The other questions
14:43 . Joint problem . Yeah . What's the percentage of
14:48 failures of these parachutes ? Yeah , that's a great
14:51 question . So the numbers I hear are maybe your
14:54 chances of having to use the backup are about one
14:58 in 700 . So there's a chance that there's going
15:01 to be something wrong with the main one . It's
15:03 about one in 700 times . Um and then the
15:07 backup parachute , we actually can't pack ourselves . It's
15:09 packed by somebody whose job is to pack backup parachutes
15:12 has been repacked and expected every six months . So
15:15 the failure rate on those is even lower . There's
15:18 no real good estimate because people don't use them very
15:20 often . So it's maybe one in three over 4000
15:23 times that we have a serious problem . Yeah ,
15:27 yeah . Uh what was that ? Uh Yeah .
15:37 So uh the parachute is actually designed to open somewhat
15:40 slowly , which sounds counterintuitive , but it could be
15:43 a big force just opening and having that much drag
15:45 all at once . So it opens in stages ,
15:48 it takes about 3-5 seconds for the parachute to open
15:51 . And so uh it's sort of a pull on
15:54 the hardest that you're wearing but it's really nothing substantial
15:56 . People people do it at all ages . There
15:59 was just 100 year old Skydiver recently . So it's
16:02 designed so that it gets away from you and it
16:04 sort of opens over a couple of seconds so that
16:06 spreads it out over time . Yeah fine . Is
16:09 there any safety features are playing to have like later
16:11 on ? Like what like what kind of meat ?
16:16 Mhm . Yeah . Yeah . There's been a lot
16:19 of development lately in terms of ways to get rid
16:23 of the main parachute and go to the back up
16:25 . Like the main parachutes are really safe now .
16:28 Um And part of it has been designing new cutaway
16:32 mechanisms . Uh what really made Scott having much safer
16:35 with the ability to go from the possibly messed up
16:39 main parachute to the reserve parachute . And there's the
16:42 series of rings up here uh which were developed in
16:46 the 70s , which sort of disconnect everything completely .
16:49 So the main parachute is now completely away from you
16:51 before you open up a good backup one . So
16:54 that's been a big thing . There's also a little
16:55 line here such that when you cut away the main
16:59 parachute , it can help open the back up so
17:02 you don't actually have to use this other handle sometimes
17:04 . So that's been that's been the newest thing .
17:07 Yeah , no , we the pilot requires oxygen about
17:16 14,000 ft . And so since we slide open a
17:19 giant , work ourselves out the plane , there's not
17:22 extra oxygen in that plane . So typically it's 14,000
17:25 ft . We open the parachute about 3000 . But
17:30 you can't go higher . If you have a supply
17:32 of oxygen in the plane , it just starts getting
17:34 really cold up there . Yeah , Yeah . Very
17:38 well , you're skydiving . You also need the oxygen
17:41 . So the requirements , I think you need to
17:45 breathe oxygen in the plane if you're above eight or
17:47 if you're between 14 and 18,000 ft . And if
17:50 you jump out above 18,000 ft , there's not related
17:53 , reasonable oxygen up there . So you need a
17:55 bottle of oxygen breathing . Yeah . What do you
17:59 do with the change in pressure ? Like Yeah ,
18:02 so you can breathe normally while skydiving . So for
18:06 the most part you clear out your ears yourself and
18:09 it doesn't require a lot of extra effort . Some
18:11 people um if you have a log like stuffy nose
18:14 there something it could be a problem . Uh So
18:17 I don't jump if I have a cold , like
18:19 a stuffy nose just because it's a pretty big pressure
18:22 changed . And so a lot of the same ways
18:24 that scuba divers used to clear their ears , holding
18:26 your nose and blowing event to copy your terms back
18:29 out . People do that sort of stuff uh depending
18:32 on how sensitive they are to it . Yeah .
18:37 Thank you . Is this a whole , we'll probably
18:40 call you guys again . Yeah , I mean it's
18:51 scary the first few times . It is really scary
18:56 . Yeah . Yeah . So . Mhm . You
19:01 have to see skydiving planes to understand , but I
19:04 think we actually trust our parachutes more than the planes
19:06 that we fly up because these planes are flying up
19:10 continuously all day every day . We may not have
19:12 the best maintenance and all that . Kind of got
19:15 some duct tape in places and calling out because they
19:19 know everyone's gonna jump out of it before him anyway
19:21 . So a lot of people trust their parachutes more
19:24 than the places , but that high up , it
19:28 really is more like floating than falling . So you
19:31 don't get that roller coaster feeling . So really ,
19:34 as long as you can mentally ignore what you're about
19:37 to do at the door , playing for a minute
19:40 or two , Then people do it . And I
19:44 don't know why people seek this out . I mean
19:46 I've been almost 300 times . Um , so after
19:51 the first few , it's not so scary , but
19:53 it definitely , it definitely takes some sort of weird
19:57 ignorance to do in the first few times . Uh
20:01 , Yeah , I mentioned close . So , uh
20:05 , parachutes aren't cheap . Uh , you don't want
20:07 to buy the use one off craigslist because they're kind
20:11 of important parachute like this maybe slightly used or in
20:15 basic colors , probably cost three or $4,000 . You
20:19 can sell it back when you're done at about the
20:21 same price . Um , so it's an investment .
20:23 Uh scott has for me cost $27 a jump .
20:27 So that's not too bad . Uh , going the
20:30 first time attached when instructors maybe more like $200 because
20:34 the instructor is very experience . And so it's it's
20:37 definitely not cheating , sort of on par with stupid
20:41 . I think Maybe one more question you can .
20:48 Mhm . Mhm . Do it again . All right
20:52 , well , great . Thank you guys again .
20:58 What your parents about ?
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