Peter Uylings

In a hurry to work with high-speed video at school?

Casio Computer Co., Ltd., brought in 2008 high‐speed video to the consumer level with the release of the EXILIM Pro EX‐F1 and the EX‐FH20 digital camera.® The EX‐F1 point‐and‐shoot camera can shoot up to 60 six‐megapixel photos per second and capture movies at up to 1200 frames per second. All this, for a price of about US

Understanding the Physics of Bungee Jumping

1000 at the time of introduction and with an ease of operation that allows high school students to work in 10 minutes with the camera. The EX‐FH20 is a more compact, more user‐friendly, and cheaper high‐speed camera that can still shoot up to 40 photos per second and capture up to 1000 fps. Yearly, new camera models appear and prices have gone down to about US

Capturing the Real World in the Classroom.

250–300 for a decent high‐speed camera. For more details we refer to Casios website.1

Exploring the giant circle on the high bar with ICT tools

Changing mass phenomena like the motion of a falling chain, the behaviour of a falling elastic bar or spring, and the motion of a bungee jumper surprise many a physicist. In this article we discuss the first phase of bungee jumping, when the bungee jumper falls, but the bungee rope is still slack. In instructional material this phase is often considered a free fall, but when the mass of the bungee rope is taken into account, the bungee jumper reaches acceleration greater than g. This result is contrary to the usual experience with free falling objects and therefore hard to believe for many a person, even an experienced physicist. It is often a starting point for heated discussions about the quality of the experiments and the physics knowledge of the experimentalist, or it may even prompt complaints about the quality of current physics education. But experiments do reveal the truth and students can do them supported by information and communication technology (ICT) tools. We report on a research project done by secondary school students and use their work to discuss how measurements with sensors, video analysis of self-recorded high-speed video clips and computer modelling allow study of the physics of bungee jumping.