Sky Diving from Space: When Science and Sports Meet
An article from early this year explored the mixing of extreme sports and scientific research. An extreme sportsperson agreed to take part in a sky dive at a height of 120,000 ft up in the sky. The purpose of the sky dive, in which the only thing protecting the sky diver would be a helmet and a protective suit, is to study whether it is possible for astronauts to bail out from falling space ships. This is a noble experiment to do to conduct some solid research but not without serious risks to the person doing the dive.
In order to perform the dive only an extreme athlete could be chosen. The article states that, “Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner hopes to travel 120,000ft up into the sky in a hot air balloon. Then he will chuck himself out and hurtle towards the ground, reaching supersonic speeds after 35 seconds”. This guy will be travelling at such high speeds that there is a chance he could be killed instantly during the freefall. Felix doesn’t seem to mind because being a true extreme athlete at heart he probably relishes in the challenge being provided to him. How many other extreme athletes can say that they sky dived from the edge of space, 120,000 ft in the air. Not too many is probably a pretty good guess.
Since extreme sports have become popular, people are always on the lookout for the next big thing or the latest thrill and are always trying to outdo each other. This experimental stunt seems like the perfect opportunity for one of them to do something so insane that no one else would be able to go one up on him for a long time to come. This could be a very strong motivational factor behind the Austrian agreeing to do this crazy stunt in the name of science. He probably thought that here he is with a chance to do a once in a lifetime sky dive that no one else on the planet has done before and if he can do it and help out the science world then that’s great but it seems that his motivation was to his need to reach the next level of extreme.
Science and sports have crossed paths before, but it has usually been science studying sports and not sports being used to test science. When science studies sports like skateboarding they are looking to see if scientific principles are being met and how they are being met. Skateboarding is an interesting sport to be studied by science because the amount of tricks done in the sport and the seemingly gravity defying motions of the skaters gives scientists a lot of food for research. One move scientists are particularly interested in is the ‘ollie’, which is basically when a skateboarder leaps off a platform with skateboard in tow and it seems as if the skateboard is attached to his/her feet but it’s really not. A website exploring the science behind the move says that the force of gravity, the weight of the skateboarder and the force of the ground all influence the movement of the skateboard and the skater. As the skater crouches to get a good lift off, he/she pushes down on the back of the skateboard while exerting no pressure on the front of the board. This makes the front go up and the back stay down. The board’s back end strikes the ground and the ground exerts a force on the tail’s end of the board which forces it up, then the skater exerts no pressure on the back end and the board rises with him/her. Soon the board is levelled out and then board and rider both return to the ground because of gravity. Who would have thought that science could be so much fun? It is when it is applied to something cool like skateboarding or sky diving.
As science progresses and extreme sports get more extreme, people are always going to be curious about how certain phenomenon takes place in sports. Science and sports seem to merge very well in bringing about a true search for answers when it comes to things that we don’t understand in the world of sports.
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