Skydiving Physics

Skydiving has always been a major interest to me. The sport of jumping out of an aircraft and performing acrobatic maneuvers in the air during free fall before landing by parachute. You're up in a plane 10,000 feet in the air, and then the door opens and you feel the wind rush through the plane. You're attached to your instructor with a harness, so he starts moving you toward the door and you're looking down at the world, and the next thing you know you're rolling out of the plane and you start to freefall. It's kind of a weird feeling to imagine, falling out of the plane and watching it fly away without you. For the first second or two of freefall you can begin to imagine the feel as you start to accelerate downward, and then the wind is in your face and feels like you're flying. Skydiving is considered a sport and it involves a lot of physics within it. According to Real World Physics Problems (2014), The physics behind skydiving involves the interaction between gravity and air resistance. When a skydiver jumps out of a plane he starts accelerating downwards, until he reaches terminal speed.

The importance of cross-sectional area to skydiving is demonstrated by the use of a parachute. An open parachute increases the cross-sectional area of the falling skydiver, increasing the amount of air resistance. When the parachute is opened, the air resistance overwhelms the downward force of gravity. Net force and the acceleration of a falling skydiver is upward. Upward net force on a downward falling object would cause that object to slow down. Due to this upward net force the skydiver slows down. According to The Physics Classroom (2014), When the skydiver's speed decreases, the amount of air resistance also decreases until once more the skydiver reaches a terminal