Blob Jumping Catapults People into the Sky Like Angry Birds

From certain vantage points, blob jumping looks like Angry Birds — without the pigs. Photo: paintballfarmch via YouTube

A craze has swept the lake shore towns of Europe, particularly in German Switzerland: blob jumping, an activity which clearly demonstrates the physics of air displacement within a “blob” — essentially a giant, partially-inflated air mattress — by means of launching people up into the air like human cannonballs.  One or more people simultaneously jump off an elevated platform and land onto one end of the blob, where another person is lying on the other end.  At impact, this person is launched high up into the sky at varied trajectories — sort of like in Angry Birds without any of the porcine targets — and back down into the water.

The heights at which humans can go up in a blob jump are impressive, so much that it’s started to get a little competitive for the highest altitude.  In June of this summer, the Guinness Book of World Records entered a new number in their pages of superlatives: 17 meters (55.8 feet) after publicized blob jump in Cham, Switzerland.  How long that record will last has yet to be determined, but from the looks of things, it’s sure going to be fun trying to beat it. [via Gizmodo]

Photo: paintballfarmch via YouTube