TERMINAL VELOCITY - version for upper secondary school

Felix Baumgartner is an Austrian skydiver and a BASE jumper. He is renowned for the particularly dangerous nature of the stunts he has performed during his career.  With a team of scientists and sponsor Red Bull he plans a free-fall from 120000 feet, the highest sky-dive on record attempting to break the sound barrier. On 25 July 2012, Baumgartner completed the second of two planned test jumps from 96640 feet. His free fall was estimated to have lasted three minutes and 48 seconds before his parachutes were deployed. His top speed was 536 mph.

From physics we know that the acceleration g is roughly 10m/s². Therefore, the velocity of a body in free fall increases by 10m/s each second. The fact that Baumgartner’s top speed was much less than 2280m/s is due to air resistance. Although air resistance is often ignored in the physics classroom, Baumgartner did not fall indefinitely with constant acceleration.