In order to maximize the thrill of leaping off of a platform and plummeting toward the ground (as if that isn’t thrill enough), designers of bungee jumps attempt to have jumpers come as close to the ground as possible without actually touching the ground.

Their designs involve calculating the amount of gravitational potential energy, elastic potential energy, kinetic energy, etc. and doing an advanced engineering analysis on this to be able to choose just the right type of bungee cord to give the dropper the maximum thrill while still being safe.

On Tuesday, April 4, Mrs. Durmis had her physics classes attempt to do the same, but with Barbie!

They had to find the spring constant, the mass of Barbie, and the height of the drop.

With this information, they found how many rubber bands to link together to get Barbie a meter less than .25 meters off the floor.

Every group in the class got within the .25 meter mark. Some even got just her hair to touch.

Senior Cassidy DeLeo said, “I had a lot of fun with this lab. It was fascinating to learn from a real world example.”