Free Fall Acceleration on the Moon. Video Analysis of Apollo 16

Image: NASA. John Young’s jump salute during Apollo 16. Photographed by Charles Duke (https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/john-w-youngs-lunar-salute/)

Is it possible to estimate the value of the gravitational field on the surface of the moon? Yup — and I’m going to do it using a video of John Young jumping.

The above image shows Young during his “jump salute”, but there’s also a video camera behind him that recorded the motion. Check it out.

I’m going to use video analysis to look at the vertical motion of John Young during his jump. But before we get into that, let’s just take a moment to realize that this is crazy awesome. Not only were there humans on the moon, but they were able to send back mostly live video to Earth. Don’t forget that in in 1972, humans didn’t really even record TV video. They had to use film to record the display on a TV. Seriously, watch this awesome Veritasium video.

But the other awesome thing is that this video shot matches up with the still photo shot from Duke (that you can see at the top). I just think that’s awesome.

Video Analysis