With All the Thrill of Skydiving: The Physics of Human Potential
Written by Aashna P.
You’re 10,000 feet in the air, peering out the open door of an airplane. The crisp wind rushes past your ears, and the hairs on your neck stand upright, at attention. Stepping forward just an inch will propel you towards the earth with the energy of 10,000 feet below you. Though you are motionless, the distant specks of the world below rouse the ants crawling in your stomach as you grip onto a cold, steel handlebar: the only thing between you and the void below. Measurement matters.
If you leap out of the same plane at the same height at the same time, but instead sink into a net 30 feet below the aircraft, you’d experience approximately t = 1.366 seconds of thrill (neglecting air resistance) before your motion stops (Δx = vt + ½at^2). Sure, jumping from a height of 30 feet is no small thing — but the 10,000 feet of distance between the net and the ground is all the thrill you did not have. From the reference point of the earth, you could still expend your 5,825 joules of potential energy (assuming your mass is 65 kilograms) by squirming out of that net; yet, with this bird’s eye view, you remain stationary (Ug = mgh). Relative position matters.
Engulfed by fear, you fall. Subject to the unyielding pull of the world below you, the distance you cover compounds the force of gravity, activating the energy of 10,000 feet into movement (W = F ᐧ d). 5,000 ft … 1,000 ft … 50 ft … you land. Your knees and parachute crumple until you are stationary once again. Work matters.
A physicist would distill the thrill you experience while skydiving, a colossal yet fleeting change in potential energy, to some combination of measurement, relative position, and work — principles that apply in parallel to the process of realizing our human potential as much as our physical potential energy.
Measurement
10,000 feet, t = 1.366 seconds, 5,825 joules — the backbone of science is measurement. From the scientific method of hypothesis, experimentation, and analysis, scientific understanding of the world depends on the objective and the quantitative. But as much as we try to ignore extraneous variables — the limiting factors that challenge us in our daily lives — for convenience, to neglect ‘air resistance’ is to perform flawed calculations. In a scientific analysis of human potential, then, we must employ some degree of measurement — and more importantly, we must recognize that measurement is limited.
Relative Position
To the physicist, potential energy and position are inseparable; similarly, where an individual starts in life — one’s relative ‘position’ — can sway how much one is able to achieve by conventional measures. In a race to the summit, to afford the climber that starts 200m up a mountain a gold medal over one that started in the foothills is unfair and improper; yet, for institutions to consider the legacy of privilege over that of hindrance is common practice.
On June 29th, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that race-based affirmative action “violate[s] the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” yet “athletes, legacy applicants, applicants on the Dean’s Interest List [primarily relatives of donors], and children of faculty or staff” (ALDC) still receive preferential treatment in the university admissions process. If a person’s potential to achieve upward mobility is determined by relative position, issuing a verdict of academic potential, in the form of a college admission, based on inconsistent baselines is counterintuitive. To calculate potential energy, scientists must first assign a zero-height position — for the American Dream to be founded on meritocracy as the Court claims, the analogous zero-height position must be where an individual’s merits alone determine their success. What the physicist has to say about this is simple: from the reference point of the ground, the individual standing on the shoulders of their ancestors has greater potential energy than one standing on the earth.
Work
Potential energy is as changeable as it is relative. Through work, also known as a change in energy, objects move from one point to another, altering their relative position in the universe (W = ΔE). If physicists wrote self-help, their instructions would be twofold: to maximize your potential energy through work, apply a force over a certain distance — and make sure it’s in the direction you wish to travel (W = F ᐧ d).
Out of the numerous sources this ‘force’ can come from, the Age of Information establishes knowledge as the most significant: to know is to have the ability to change — through intention, advocacy, or practice — and thus knowledge is a prerequisite for the application of any force, or effort. But knowing without communicating is useless, rendering the distance across which ideas travel critical: any highly successful movement in the modern day can be attributed to the spread of information like wildfire. If knowledge enables change, then distance compounds it.
Historically, however, knowledge hasn’t had the force to travel so far, so fast. It was only when German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1436 that scholars could, for the first time, both “replicate their ideas quickly” and “make them available to large audiences.” The ease through which a single thought could permeate through the world’s collective consciousness increased dramatically — and with it, so did the amount of ‘work’ an idea could do. In enlightenment era France, the democratization of knowledge transformed public sentiment, a force that traveled great distances, into revolution, compelling French writer Louis-Sebástien Mercier to declare: “Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world! Tremble before the virtuous writer!”
Physicists must evaluate the vector quantity of force for direction as much as magnitude; as newspaper pages give way to screens, netizens should similarly consider both the positive and negative potential of the ubiquity of information in the modern day — a formidable force in its own right. With the entry barrier for publishing within the reach of the average Joe, on one hand, marginalized perspectives gain access to broader audiences, challenging previously unchecked injustice; on the other, malicious actors, with the mere press of a button, propagate toxicity, misinformation, and hate with greater force, across greater distances. Hence, in order to expect our work to positively contribute towards expanding our ‘human potential,’ we must weigh the direction as well as the magnitude of our efforts.
Human Potential
Though attempts to measure it remain imperfect, human potential is as dynamic as its physical counterpart, potential energy. Relative to changes in reference point and altered through effortful work, human potential initially appears tense with scientific theory due to its variability. Yet, by examining the fundamentals of physics, we gain insight into the underlying commonalities. More than measurement, constant revision grounds scientific study: drafting hypotheses, conducting experiments, and carrying out analysis, only to discard past conclusions in light of new information.
Thus, in the study of oneself, we must also reframe societal narratives around human potential. Like how measurement limits scientific knowledge to theory at best, our perception of our own ‘potential energy’ barely scrapes the surface of understanding we have yet to uncover about ourselves. This unknown of human potential is exhilarating: the moment a skydiver leaps out of their aircraft, they are at liberty of the forces around them, save for the careful calculations of gravity and drag that help to secure an eventual landing spot. Yet, when we consider human potential as fixed, or, in the case of the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, overlook relative position, we risk hurtling through space without a safeguard or any careful calculations — perpetuating inequality, and growing complacent with false meritocracy. Endlessly changing through relative position and work, we must regard human potential as fluid, versatile, and deeply powerful — like the canvas of a parachute, it may billow and flow as it guides you to safety, but, inevitably, you land. For this reason, whether we’re 10,000 feet in the air or firmly on the ground, it is precisely when we embrace the dynamic nature of human potential that we begin to unlock its thrill.
