If you’re an enthusiast of Pogo Sticks, you may have been wondering whatever happened to the 2002 US patent application from inventors John Hackworth, Kirk Hackworth and Mark Soderberg for their tripodic Pogo Device . “A more stable pogo stick device, which may or may not be steerable, employs multiple spring legs, at least one […]
Tag: jump
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 […]
Immune system suppression from bungee jumping (study)
Of all the possible pitfalls* which can affect bungee jumpers, a compromised immune system might not be the first to spring to mind. But spring it did to the minds of David J van Westerloo, Goda Choi, Ester C Löwenberg, Jasper Truijen, Alex F de Vos, Erik Endert, Joost C M Meijers, Lu Zhou, Manuel […]
Bungee jumping : the math(s)
If the physics and mathematics of bungee jumping are amongst your interests, you are, as they say, spoilt for choice. There are quite a number of readily accessible academic studies at your disposal. Might we suggest (in no particular order)… • Understanding the physics of bungee jumping by A. Heck, P. Uylings, E. Kędzierska • […]
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 […]
Cheese jumping
Why is Double Gloucester cheese called Double Gloucester, and why is Single Gloucester cheese called Single Gloucester? The British Cheese Board, which on its own authority is “the voice of British cheese“, says that no one quite knows, that “various stories exist”. Their history of those cheeses includes a description of how, long ago, certain […]
Jumping Off a Building With Bubble Wrap
Rhett Allain, writing in Wired, took a calculating approach to bubble wrap. He introduced it with these thoughts: How much bubble wrap do you need to survive jumping out of the 6th floor of a building? Let me randomly say this is a height of 20 meters. Where would you start with a question like this? […]
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 […]