Sport Science FTW!

Normally, it isn't really news when a show doesn't do anything wrong. I am making an exception for ESPN's Sport Science. Here is part 2 of Sport Science trying to reproduce Kobe Bryant's "jumping over a car" stunt.

And here is part 1 (although part 2 is the only interesting part). See. I can get along with Sport Science. Anyway, I am not sure that Kobe's jump used wires - but I assumed it was fake. Here is my analysis of Kobe's Jump (this stuff is old). And this is the plot I created from video analysis of Kobe.

i-bb141db6b940f2fe2cd837bc95762584-2010-04-28_kobe_bryant_jumping_over_a_car_dot_physics.jpg

The tough thing about looking at Kobe's jump is that he changes his body position. I had to look at several parts of his body during the jump and kind of estimate the motion of his center of mass.

Sport Science: I hope we can be friends now. I like friends that have cool toys.

More like this

This is an old video, but still interesting. In this video clip, Kobe Bryant jumps over a pool of snakes.
I've never eaten Kobe beef from Japan, and now I never will. Authentic Kobe beef is essentially veal that isn't put out of its misery. Barry Estabrook, in the new Gourmet, investigates the real life of these very expensive cows (ten ounces of Kobe beef can set you back about $175):
Let me be clear. I am not really an attacker. If someone wrote a report about ski jumping or something and misused the word "momentum", no big deal.
We have all seen the Kobe Bryant video of him jumping over an Aston Martin - this keeps coming up on the Internet. There has been vast discussions of whether this is real or fake. I will do my best to examine the evidence.

Your link to the old analysis has an extra 'A' on the end.

It seemed like the unaided stuntman could get the peak height, but not get the duration above the hood/trunk for all his body parts.

Could you plot a shape on the graph with the profile of the car's duration at the different heights? Height-of-car vs t?

@Dave,

Thanks for pointing out the link error. And yes - that is an excellent idea for a graph. I will do that (soon).

@Rob,

Yes! I remember that show and I think I remember the guy jumping over a car.

also, I edited your post so your link would always work.