On Friday, September 29, students from the Advanced Placement (AP) Physics classes at Benet Academy had the opportunity to go on a field trip to iFly Indoor Skydiving in Naperville. Spending the entire school day there, students listened to an introductory class, experienced indoor skydiving, and performed lab experiments to learn and understand more about the physics of forces, fluids, and mechanics.

The students first sat in on a mini class to introduce them to the wind tunnel and the physics behind it. They learned about the structure of the wind tunnel, a basic idea of how the wind tunnel works, and the interaction between gravity and air resistance. They also were able to gain a better understanding of how certain factors, such as frontal surface area and mass, affect an object’s terminal velocity.

Then, students were able to do indoor skydiving. After understanding the safety precautions and the hand signals the instructor might use, they suited up and waited outside the wind tunnel. One by one, each student got to experience indoor skydiving, being suspended in the air with the wind blowing from below while they had an instructor to help them. They were also able to experience the “high flight” in which they went beyond just hovering above the ground and levitated up and down several feet high, giving a faux-experience of flying. After stepping out of the wind tunnel, student Neave McConnell expressed her enjoyment, saying, “That was really fun. Now I want to try actual skydiving.” The students were also able to witness more experienced flyers fly in the wind tunnel, performing fancy tricks such as flips and turns.

From this experience, each student’s terminal velocity was recorded, and they used this information along with their calculated frontal surface area and mass to perform lab calculations that will be included in the lab report they will submit. Along with those calculations, the students have an additional lab procedure to come up with on their own.

Many students found this experience enjoyable and expressed their wishes that Benet Academy had more field trips available for immersive learning such as this.