Physicists calculate highest dives most humans can safely withstand

Karmela Padavic- Callaghan is a writer.

How high would you go? An experiment with 3D-printed models has shown how high people can jump into water.

The forces experienced when slamming into water were studied by Sunghwan Jung and his colleagues. A person with their hands by their sides, a person with their hands above their head, and a person with a foot representing jumping in feet were all represented. The models were filmed with a high-speed camera when they were dropped.

The researchers compared the forces they recorded to those known to cause physical damage. The force levels were met for head-first divers above 8 metres, hands-first divers above 12 metres, and foot-first divers above 15 metres.

The displacement of water is what causes most force to affect the body. The liquid forcefully resists when you push your fingers into it.

The limits found in the study have not been met by many people. Laso Schaller broke the record for the highest feet-first dive by jumping from 58.6 metres above water. Jung says that to execute such extreme jumps without injury divers need to strengthen their muscles.

According to Nathaniel Jones at the Loyola University Medical Center in Illinois, head and neck injuries are the most common injuries in divers. platform divers average 50 to 100 dives a day, while surfboard divers average 100 to 150 dives a day. He says doing a lot of dives puts them at risk.

Jung's team wants to experiment with different shaped models for diving into snow rather than water.

Science Advances was published in the journal.