![]() To that end, competitive speed skydivers often prefer to wear slick bodysuits and skillfully maintain a strictly streamlined head-down body position to minimize the coefficient of drag. In fact, the primary tool in a speed skydiver’s kit is the reduction of friction–that “surface texture” point in paragraph number two. Additionally, the skydiver can’t change his or her shape much beyond the use of an aerodynamic helmet. Obviously, the skydiver cannot increase his or her mass enough to significantly increase his or her terminal velocity. The tricks of the speed skydiving trade have been developed to cheat nature as much as possible. It has the goal to “achieve and maintain the highest possible terminal velocity.” Speed skydiving is the fastest non-motorized sport on Earth. It’s a big enough deal that it has its own association–the International Speed Skydiving Association. Speed skydiving is a skydiving discipline that has supported competition divisions since the mid-2000s. These will do much to show-and-tell about how this can be the case. Here are a couple of examples of skydiving disciplines on the opposite ends of terminal velocity. There are ways to minimize that drag even further by streamlining the body, which allows for speeds in the vicinity of, ya know, 300 mph. It is fast enough to result in damage to both parachute and skydiver if that skydiver doesn’t do him/herself a favor and slow the heck down by changing position and waiting before pulling. Terminal Velocity of a Head Down SkydiverĬhange that body position to head-down, and you’ve just ramped up that terminal velocity to around 150-180 mph. For instance: In a stable, belly-to-earth position, a jumper’s terminal velocity hangs out at a zippy 120 mph. Since different skydives result in different air resistance, they end up resulting in what can be very different terminal velocities. It doesn’t even revolve around the type of skydiving–called Relative Work, or “RW”–that involves falling with your belly pointing toward the Earth, as the above equation assumes. Skydiving doesn’t just revolve around tandem jumping. Terminal Velocity of a Belly to Earth Skydiver It ain’t that simple, though, as you might imagine. For a human-shaped object, the equation spits out a terminal velocity of 60 meters per second–about the terminal velocity of the typical skydiver, which clocks in at of 55 meters per second. The downward speed achievable by the human form in freefall is a function of several factors–including the body’s mass, orientation, skin area, and surface texture–but the usual math standardizes all that. What is the Terminal Velocity of a Skydiver? You’d have learned (yawningly) that the terminal velocity of a falling body occurs when the force exerted on it by gravity is exactly balanced by the force exerted on it by resistance, such that the body experiences zero acceleration. Remember ‘ terminal velocity‘ from physics? Your high-school self might have dropped a ball bearing into oil, taken some readings and scratched down an equation or two. Ah, science! You probably learned about this stuff in high school, but you never learned it like this.
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