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Comment by thedanbob | Hacker News Reader

As an avid swing jumper in my youth I can say with some certainty that 3m is closer to the mark than 2. Also, my brother and I devised a variant that would work for the winter Olympics: jump at the lowest point of the swing for maximum velocity and slide over the snow.

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I came to say too that 3m is more realistic, from what I did in school. Also, around 1-2m is possible if you jump backwards, but you may end up visiting the hospital as well.

At my school the swing was near a clift, so sometimes you were able to combine swing jump, ski jump and hospital visit with a single jump. Good times XD

Clift?

cliff?

LOL, by bad, I wanted to say hill instead. For reference, here is a recent photo: https://mcs.ed.cr/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/WhatsApp-Image-... . They had the swing in the hill (yes, now I know the difference) where now there is the second floor of the 3 stories building in the center. So if we jumped too far we end up more or less near the small yellow roofs that I think are a playground.

So no, it was a hill, not a cliff. Not being a native English speaker bites me again XD

I think it was clear that the author wasn't finding the maximum possible distance, only the maximum achievable in a short amount of time.

I say this because his graph of distance only went up with time, whereas we know that eventually it will have to level off as a larger angle won't translate into more distance.

Personally for swing jumps I would only start counting the distance at the furthest point of the swing when it is fully perpendicular, and not from the point of the jump.

This does look pretty close to 3 meters doesn't it? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KOaT850cArE

Honestly the question should be less "how far can you go" and more "when does the pebble gravel / mulch run out?"

> when does the pebble gravel / mulch run out

Now who can jump the furthest head first over that line onto the concrete.

* back in my day we didnt have gravel or mulch under or around the swing, just concrete / ashphalt

Our variation was to jump out at the exact moment the swing started to return at the top of the motion. That way you just stepped out into space in a leisurely manner, and immediately fell straight down into a standing position.

Stiff legged.

On asphalt.

How we didn't die, I'll never know.

Abot how you guys didn't die, didn't the seat come back to hit you in the head?

If you did it right, you went straight down, and the swing lost all of its momentum and sort of just dangled loosely afterwards.

Again. Death and dismemberment should've been the thing.

As a swing builder for my kids, I can say that it depends on the rope length... Their swing had 10 meters of rope and you could have easily jumped 10 meters and hurt yourself

I agree, and in my experience the taller the swing in terms of rope/chain length, the further I could jump.

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