QuickTopic (SM) free message boards QuickTopic (SM) free message boards
Skip to Messages
  Sign In to access your topic list  |New Topic |My Topics|Profile
Upgrade to Pro   Customize, show pictures, add an intro, and more:   QuickTopic Pro...and check out QuickThreadSM
Topic: Bad science at McDonalds
Views: 6661, Unique: 4162 
Subscribers: 0
What's
this?
Printer-Friendly Page
Subscribe to get & post, or stop messages by email Subscribe
All messages    << 48-52  47-47 of 52  31-46 >>
About these ads
Who | When
Messagessort recent-bottom   
Post a new message
 
chemgeek  47
01-30-2007 06:07 AM ET (US)
I gave the problem some thought while I couldn't sleep last night and came up with some model numbers: Bernardo is right that you're fighting both inertia and gravity when jumping and that inertia doesn't change. But if you look at a average poor jumper doing a jump from a standstill, he will probably crouch (moving his center of gravity -0.5m) and then jump so that his feet are 0.5m off the ground. So he will have to spend the same energy producing impulse for his jump that he has to use just to get up from the crouch (i.e. whatever it takes to move your center of gravity up half a meter).

On the moon, assuming everything else stays the same (no bulky spacesuits etc.) the work just to get up from the crouch decreases to 1/6, so he will have 1 5/6 times the work left for the actual jumping. So if the force that his muscles can generate is constant and the 0.5m that he crouched before the jump stay constant, he should end up with almost twice the lift-off velocity compared to earth. Of course that assumes that his muscels can contract fast enough to actually produce the speed.

Anyway, shouldn't the model jumper be able to jump almost 12x the heigth than on earth. Maybe my high school physics is so rusty that I messed up somewhere, but I don't think I did.

So, the better you are at jumping the less you benefit from the lower gravity, because the fraction of work you spend on just moving your ass, instead of accelerating, will be lower.
RSS link What's this?
All messages    << 48-52  47-47 of 52  31-46 >>
QuickTopicSM message boards
Over 200,000 topics served
Learn more Frequently asked questions  Acknowledgements
What they're saying about QuickTopic
 Questions, comments, or suggestions? Contact Us
Read our use policy before beginning. We value your privacy; please read our privacy statement.
Copyright ©1999-2008 Internicity Inc. All rights reserved.