On April 5, 2024, many Bryant scholars and science teachers went to try out an activity of a lifetime at Long Island City’s iFly Indoor Skydiving environment.

As you enter the building with a group of other excited and curious students, you go through a few checks to see if you meet certain health requirements, including weight limits and checks for any injuries that prevent you from skydiving safely. Your group goes through a presentation explaining the structure and mechanics behind the indoor skydiving system as well as a review of many physics concepts, including Newton’s three laws of motion (which was easily understood by Bryant’s top-performing physics and chemistry students in the group).

After understanding the safety protocol consisting of hand signs and proper arm and leg positions, your group is then asked to remove accessories such as hanging jewelry and glasses prior to the skydiving experience. Your group then changes into bright red flight suits and helmets to stay safe while skydiving. As you and your classmates go one by one, you feel an adrenaline rush as you’re pulled and held above the high-speed winds in the middle of a see-through tunnel in front of the rest of the group.

Overall, this trip was a great way to spend some time learning about the most entertaining real-world applications of physics in skydiving. Visiting or returning to iFly with family and friends would be a wonderful moment filled with short-lived fear, long-term exhilaration, and–eventually–laughter.