Why does a bungee jumper stop

Then question b would be 3 as its closest to the ground and c position 2 but i dont know how to explain it. Question D I don't have clue.

Add comment. For C, the rope is stretched the most in order to have maximum elastic potential energy. This occurs at the bottom of the drop, when the rope is stretched to the max, the speed of the jumper drops to zero, and the jumper is about to start going back up as the rope begins to unstretch itself. For D, there is an interchange of elastic potential energy of the rope with gravitational potential energy, but there is also air resistance, which removes energy from the system, and maybe energy being lost as sound when the rope stretches and unstretches.

Energy is not conserved and eventually the air resistance and other causes of energy dissipation will slow the jumper until a state of static equilibrium is reached between the tension of the rope and the jumper's weight. For E, the rope's elastic potential energy is zero starting at the top, since the rope is not yet stretched, and remains zero until it is fully unwound at position 2, then starts to rise after position 2 and attains its maximum value when it is fully stretched at the bottom, which is position 3.

Hi Emma! How are they formed above and below ground? How have penguins adapted to live in the cold? Freshly Baked Science. The Physics of Bungee Jumping. Back to Day 8. More science. Singing in the Shower. Icicle Formation. Penguin Adaptations. How to prevent bloat. So now let's look at the first fall that the jumper makes.

As the jumper falls down, gravity does positive work because the force of gravity points in the same direction that the jumper falls in. The spring force of the bungee cord, however, does negative work on the jumper because the jumper is falling down while the cord is pulling up. The third force, air resistance, also does negative work during the fall since it pushes upwards.

As the jumper reverses direction and starts to spring back up, gravity does negative work because the gravitational force pulls down while the jumper is moving up. The spring force does positive work this time because it is in the same direction as the jumper's motion. However, air resistance still does negative work because now it pushes down on the jumper. Now to finish off, let's look at the energy in this situation.

There are three types of energy here: potential energy of gravity and in the stretched cord, kinetic energy of the jumper, and thermal heat energy of the air and other things. Gravitational potential energy depends on how high of the ground you are, e. The potential energy of the bungee cord depends on how much the cord has been stretched, i. Kinetic energy depends on how fast you are moving, as we mentioned. One of the most important equations in physics is the work-energy equation. At the top of the fall the jumper isn't moving, so the kinetic energy is zero.

The gravitational potential energy there is large. At the bottom of the fall, again for an instant the jumper isn't moving and the kinetic energy is zero. There the gravitational potential energy has gone down, but the bungee cord potential energy has gone up so much that the total potential energy is back to the starting value. In between, the jumper has kinetic energy, so the gain of potential energy by the cord in that range isn't enough to make up for the loss of gravitational potential energy.

Basically energy gets exchanged back and forth during the jump, and if air resistance were not present, the bungee jumper's total energy would remain constant and he or she would continue boinging up and down forever. However, you know very well that this is not the case! So now let's take a look at air resistance and its effects on the bungee jumper.

Air resistance is the main reason that the bungee jumper, on his or her way back up to the top, never quite reaches the place that he or she started the jump from.

In fact, as the jumper bounces up and down, each time his or her maximum height gets less and less. This is similar to a ball that bounces lower and lower until it stops bouncing at all.

This is because air resistance is working against the bungee jumper and the bouncy ball both on the way down and on the way up, i. The jumper comes to rest right at the point where the cord pulls up just as much as gravity pulls down, Does the energy just go away?