A British fascination: parachute failure

Britain continues to be fascinated with parachute jump failure. Here are two examples, one new, one old: “How to survive a parachute failure“—BBC News, 2018. and “Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials” —British Medical Journal, 2003. (Thanks to IanVisits for bringing the new […]

The Measured Jumps of a Regal Jumping Spider

How much jumping would a jumping spider jump if a bunch of scientists made her keep jumping? One answer to that, involving one spider—a regal jumping spider—appears in this study, and in an accompanying video: “Energy and Time Optimal Trajectories in Exploratory Jumps of the Spider Phidippus regius,” Mostafa R.A. Nabawy, Girupakaran Sivalingam, Russell J. Garwood, […]

Towards a robotic jumping flea (new study)

A South Korean research team, Gwang-Pil Jung and Kyu-Jin Cho, (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering/Institute of Advanced Machines and Design, Seoul National University) and Hong-Cheol Choi (Department of Physics and Chemistry, Korea Military Academy, Seoul) have made progress towards the development of jumping flea robot. “Inspired by the relationship between leg compliance and jumping […]

Jumping beans (the locomotion of)

The US-based Georgia Institute of Technology (Gatech) isn’t just known for undertaking research into lethal weapons systems – far from it – it also investigates, for example, the locomotion and ‘navigation’ abilities of Mexican Jumping Beans. The beans, which are inhabited by the larvae of the moth Laspeyresia saltitans (or sometimes Cydia deshaisiana) have an […]

A Measured Celebration of the Jumping Frog

Mark Twain’s short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” became the jumping off point, more than a century after the story was written, for a scientific study of frog-jumping performance: “Chasing maximal performance: a cautionary tale from the celebrated jumping frogs of Calaveras County,” Henry C. Astley, E.M. Abbott, E. Azizi, R.L. Marsh […]