At iFly indoor skydiving tunnels, students are learning some of the fundamentals of physics by tossing balls into flight chambers, where powerful air currents are strong enough to suspend objects mid-air.
The STEM program at iFly has become one of the company’s fastest-growing areas of business (alongside party packages, events, and, as of a few months ago, virtual reality). Bus loads of children visit U.S.-based iFly facilities each weekday to learn the basics of terminal velocity, acceleration, and force.
A typical visit includes hands-on experiments, such as the ball demo that has students tossing balls of different shapes and weights into the tunnel to see how each is affected by force and terminal velocity.