Hands-on Experiment for Modeling the Baumgartner Jump Using Free-Fall Kinematics with Drag

Abstract

Supersonic free-fall jumps are excellent examples of kinematics in the context of drag. They have attracted a lot of media, public, and scientific interest. In 2012, Felix Baumgartner jumped from a height of approximately 38.969 km. During his flight he reached a top speed of 373 m/s, becoming the first human to travel faster than the speed of sound outside of an airplane. Since everyday topics are known to motivate students (e.g., Kuhn and Müller), the topic of Baumgartner’s jump seems to be very well suited for teaching kinematics in the context of drag.