How come skiers are able to do those long jumps where they stay in the air for a few seconds and land unscathed while a normal jump that lasts that long would probably break your leg?
In: Physics
Because when they land, they don’t really stop. As the saying goes, “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.” Ski jumps are set up so that there doesn’t have to be a sudden stop. The landing slope is sloped downward at an angle almost as steep as the ski jumper is falling, so when they make contact with the ground, they don’t have to absorb *all* their momentum with their legs all at once. If they made the same jump but there was just flat ground waiting for them below, then it would be a lot uglier.
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