Testing iFly

A few months ago, for the sake of conversation, I mixed up Newton’s 3rd Law with the Impulse-Momentum Theorem. I thought that if I ever went skydiving, which I plan to do when I’m eighteen, the rushing air would “hit” me with an impact, and that impact would push back with an equal force, keeping me suspended but still gaining speed because of gravity. Lo and behold, what better day to put this to test than my seventeenth birthday.  

What I learnt was that skydivers stay stable because of drag and careful body positioning, not because of an “air collision”. To test my flawed concept and to get as close to freefall flight as I could without leaving Earth’s atmosphere, my friends and I went to iFly indoor skydiving.  

The moment I entered the clear, tall vertical wind tunnel, the air roared upward like an unstoppable force. Although I was lifted instantly, my instructor held me tight to a safe height. Every tiny shift in my arms and legs sent me spinning or rising. I was instructed to keep my shoulders spread apart, and my elbows and hands facing inwards. This was to keep stability and increase drag. The sensation was raw and thrilling as the invisible air pressed my entire body carrying me the way Earth’s atmosphere carries airplanes. That less than two-minute duration of the flight proved to be an equal and opposite reaction to the steep price they charged us upfront, but it surely gave me a glimpse of the delicate balance between physics and control. I landed safely on my feet and walked out with an assured concept of what Isaac Newton was thinking. For every action, there indeed is an equal and opposite reaction.