Hey everybody, welcome back to Explain Macon 5, a podcast where we take the questions you always want to ask and talk about them in a way that's easy to understand. We are your hosts, I'm Tim. Hey everyone, it's Kevin. So Kevin, are you skier?
A little bit? Ever do ski jumps? Oh no, no, no, looks a little scary. You?
Just tiny ones, very tiny ones. Not like they do at the Olympics. Are we talking about Olympic ski jumping today then? Yes, precisely.
So ski jumpers can jump over 100 meters, which is a shocking distance when you think about it. To travel that distance vertically, you're also going to take a significant drop. So here's my Eli 5 question. How do ski jumpers not sustain huge injuries when they're falling from such a great height?
Well, like the same goes, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the 7th stop at the end. So ski jumpers are, yes, they're falling due to gravity, but they're also moving forward from their momentum off the ramp, right? And when they land, they're usually landing on a slope that allows them to keep going in more or less the same direction, forward and down. And kind of like a car on the highway, you can be traveling 80 miles per hour as long as you don't have a dramatic change in the speed or direction you're fine.
So the direction they fall after a jump is similar to the direction of the slope they hit, so they just keep on going and it doesn't jar their legs too much. So that means it's all about slope design then. Yes, exactly. The slope is shaped to match the exact trajectory of the jumpers, who are really just in a somewhat controlled fall with a bit of forward momentum, which they try to maintain for as long as possible.
So since ski jumpers are practically falling from hundreds of feet up, landing on flat ground isn't desirable, so instead the landing zone is still very steep. So what if they overshoot that part of the slope then? Well, that can be a problem. In fact, in a competition, if a sufficient number of jumpers lands very far down the hill, the starting distance is shortened, which in turn also shortens the jump.
Oh, the starting distance being the ramp they have to get off the jump. And then the scoring methods are designed to take these changes into account. Wasn't there an old film about all this? Indeed.
There was a film from all the way in the 1970s about the Swiss ski jumper, Walter Steiner. One of the issues Steiner was constantly dealing with was starting height. He was flying so much further than other jumpers that he's almost landing on flat ground. You know, it's a very dangerous situation.
And officials were reluctant to lower the height for his safety, though, since it will make all the other competitors' efforts look so much less impressive. Right. The film is by Wenner Herzog, right? Yes, yes.
He's a pretty famous director, screenwriter, author, actor, even author director. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams. People with unique talents in obscure fields or individuals who are in conflict with nature. So the sport of ski jumping is a really interesting one.
What makes a ski jumper more skilled than another one? So we put squat thrust power. So these jumpers, they actually do jump off at the end, but it requires perfect timing and coordination. There's a whole sequence of really fast and precise and powerful movements that have to happen at the exact point of takeoff, positioning from the running position through the jump itself and then into flight position.
And then you've got to get the optimal parabola and angle of attack has to be maintained throughout the flight. It's actually an extremely difficult sport. So there's taking off, but then there's also the flight itself, right? It must be hard to hold so still.
Mm-hmm. In addition to the takeoff, once in the air, their body position kind of mimics an airfoil. The more stable in this position they are and the longer they hold it, the more lift they can produce. They also make their body into a wing shape while they are in the air, so the jumper with airfoam can create more lift, allowing them to fly on a surface further distance.
Fascinating. So in designing a ski jumping course, then, there's this thing called the construction point or the critical point. What is that? Yes, the construction point, and also known as the critical point, calculation point, calculation line, k-point or k-spot, it's a line across a ski jumping hill which indicates the hill's steepest point in meters.
So it was formally used to classify the size of a ski jumping hill and calculate the number of points granted by a given jump. And since mid-2004, the hills are instead measured in hill size. I see. So it's changed and updated, but let's talk about what a construction point is.
Okay. So first of all, you can think of a construction point. The slope is the place where the jump starts being dangerous. The slope gradually straightens out from then on, you know?
Anything before the construction point is nominal. Every meter past that point is increased load. And you'll find that extremely far jumps very rarely have a stylistically perfect landing. That's because the impact gets too hard, you know?
You'll sometimes see jumpers bailing out early in the flight position to shorter jump if they see they're flying too far. And you'll often see even the most extreme jumps ending with a fall. That's all because the slope wasn't sufficiently steep enough. I see.
So how about hill size then, this new metric? Yes. So hill size is a measurement for the size of a ski jumping hill. It's calculated based on the technical data of a hill, you know, based on like radius, angle, inclination, and record distance.
And since mid-2004, hill size became the official measurement for the size of hills. It's replaced construction points, all these things, and remain the basis for issuing points right now. The distance is measured as a straight line from the takeoff to the knoll, and then follows the landing surface until reaching a hill size point. Got it.
So with that, why don't we finish off by you telling us where the largest hills are? The world's largest hills are in Vikersen, Norway, and in Klienika, Slovenia. Both have a hill size of 240 meters. Wow.
I don't think I'll be seeing jump in that anytime soon. You want something new today? If you did, send us a tweet or send us an email. We'd love to hear from you if you have suggestions on future episodes.
Thank you as always to the wonderful community at r slash explain my time 5 on Reddit. We will see you all next week. We'll see you all next week.