Could You Really Sling Shot a Human From One Building to Another?

I don’t know if you have ever looked at this thing called “The Internet”, but let me tell you something. There are a bunch of videos out there. Some of them are crazy, some of them are real and some of them are fake.

In this video, we see a dude in a giant sling shot on top of a building. The sling shot is pulled back and released. The guy goes flying through the air to another building with a giant net for him to land in. It looks scary, but don’t worry — it’s a fake video from an old video ad.

Just because we know something is fake doesn’t mean we can’t use it for some physics. If this was a real thing, I just don’t think it would work — and if it did, one small change in the launch velocity and the human would miss the net.

There are a bunch of great physics questions we can consider here.

• What launch velocity would you need to get to the other building?
• Estimate the spring constant for the sling shot launcher.
• What acceleration would a human…