Celestia Forums

I was just wondering, if you were standing on a planet with half the gravity of Earth, would that mean you could jump twice as high or is it not that simple a calculation?

Short answer is yes.

Not so short, It depends on atmosphere conditions which goes in resistance from the atmosphere, also there will be a maximum speed at which you can push off the ground (jump) which will also limit how high you can jump.

Edit:
http://weblog.fortnow.com/2007/03/jumping-in-space.html

For the Moon with is 1/6 the gravity
(6F/Mg -1)/(F/Mg-1)
F= Force
M = Mass
g = Gravitational constant

If it were on Pluto you would weight 1/15
so the equation would be
(15F/Mg -1)/(F/Mg-1)

Hope that makes sense

Danial wrote:I was just wondering, if you were standing on a planet with half the gravity of Earth, would that mean you could jump twice as high or is it not that simple a calculation?

Danial,

It is really simple. Imagine, that you try to jump as high as you can, so you try to put the maximal amount of energy in the jump. This energy is always the same (on all planets, moons etc.). When you are at the maximal height during the jump, this energy is just your potential energy in the gravitational field (I neglect some small energy loss). There is a simple formula for potential energy:

[tex]E_{p} = m g h[/tex]

You can see, that if the energy [tex]E_{p}[/tex] and your mass [tex]m[/tex] are constant (as in this case), the height [tex]h[/tex] is anti-proportional to the gravitational acceleration [tex]g[/tex].

So, the answer to your question is yes

Paul

Thank you both