Yorkshire and North East

Bungee Jumping

Bungee Jumping at The British Association for the Advancement of Science Festival of Science in York

Bungee jumping was a great attractor for the many school and college students who came up to the York Racecourse to obtain their adrenalin thrill.  It had been organised by Glyn Jones of York College with Science City York, and sponsored by the Institute of Physics.  Staff from Feedback Instruments provided a number of Pasco Xplorer GLX dataloggers with associated sensors for students to attach to themselves for the jumps and, no surprise, wow how their pulse rates rose.  It was fortunate that they did not have sound sensors attached as the screams and utterings might well have been beyond the respectable in some cases.

Graphs of Acceleration of model bungee jumper vs. time
and Force (pull) on bungee cord vs. time

To aid further work back in the laboratory the Yorkshire Branch of the Institute of Physics provided the schools with a CD-ROM free with a generic version of a model bungee jumper (Action Man) activity for a vast array of dataloggers, complete with information about bungee jumping, the physics of the force and accelerometer sensors used, teachers’ and technicians’ notes, associated web links and typical results (as shown above).  The files of the generic version, and some dealing with specific dataloggers (list what you use in case it is available), can still be obtained on receipt of a blank CD-ROM and return postage sent to Chris A Butlin, 16 Wheelwright Close, Sutton upon Derwent, York YO41 4JZ.  

A number of schools filmed the jumps and that produced by the Joseph Rowntree School in York has been made available for all to see via their website at http://www.JosephRowntreeSchool.co.uk – go to the Physics Bungee section.

Chris A Butlin

1 November 2007

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