#RATE OF FREEFALL FREE#

Skydivers experience significant air resistance, so they are not actually in free fall. In physics, and in this book, we use the term free fall to describe the motion of an object when gravity is the only force acting on the object, or any other forces are small enough compared to gravity that we can ignore them without introducing too much error. Now that we have introduced the skydiver’s use of the term free fall, we need to recognize that physics uses the term free fall in a completely different way, so we will need to be careful to avoid confusion.

The 2012 jump was sponsored by GoPro cameras and the video has a much higher production value than the more recent 2014 jump: He was going so fast that his body broke the sound barrier, creating a sonic boom that could be heard on the ground.” The jump broke the previous record of 127,852 feet set by Felix Baumgartner in 2012. According to the Paragon Space Development Corporation, “Eustace reached top speeds of over 800 miles per hour. The current record “free fall” time of about 5 minutes was set by Alan Eustace in 2014 when he fell from an altitude of more than 135,000 feet. During a recreational skydive the “free fall” time is about one minute. The time a skydiver spends between leaving the aircraft and opening a parachute is often called the “free fall” time. 14 Free Fall Acceleration Skydiving “Free Fall” Skydivers adjust body orientation to tune fall speed and adjust their relative vertical positions. Image credit: Skydive Miami by Norcal21jg, via Wikimedia Commons

Rate of freefall