[Torg] Jumping in Torg

[Benjmain Grant]

For the same reason that two masses of different values fall at the same rate, two objects of different masses will travel the same distance if launched at the same velocity and angle, discounting air resistance (which hampers the larger of the two object more given the same profile).

In other words, to be blunt, your assertion that the human body goes less far because it has less mass is flatly incorrect.

If it makes you feel any better, tons of people make that mistake.

Now it *is* true that it takes more energy to get a larger mass moving faster than a smaller mass, making it actually easier to throw a small mass farther than a large mass.  But in the examples discussed so far, energy has not been a matter under discussion, and the examples have begun with a mass already moving at a certain speed at the start of the jump.

-Benn Grant
eFix Computer Consulting
benn at 4eFix.com
603.283.6601


-----Original Message-----
From: torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com [mailto:torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com] On Behalf Of Jon Woodman
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 12:54 PM
To: Kansas Jim; torg at justintimeadventures.com
Subject: Re: [Torg] Jumping in Torg

A couple of points to add:

In reference to Phil Dack's note, most good olympic jumpers (long & triple) have been sprinters also.  For instance, Carl Lewis and Jesse Owens.  As a former college track athlete (I was distance, not sprints), I know that they train jumpers and sprinters together and focus mostly on strength of the Quadriceps muscles (thighs).  Not all sprinters are good jumpers, and not all jumpers are good sprinters, but their events are similar in their requirements.  So I agree that jumping should be put primarily on strength.  And no, these guys are not huge like weightlifters, but trust me, their thighs are huge.  

Also, I believe that as far as a speedster jumping a long ways, there might be a few other items involved.  If you look at the Flash, for instance, he uses manipulation of air molecules to move through the air, making jumping superfluous.  He can, in a sense, walk on air.  Why jump?  Moving at those speeds would make it possible for the molecules of the air to actually have a physical involvement.  Which of course brings  up the point of why they hell doesn't he burn up from friction?  But I think there would also be a physical explanation for why a speedster wouldn't jump as far as say a car would be expected to.  Ultimately the human body has a fairly small mass associated with it.  I believe that you'd need a fairly large mass to propel an object through the air for a larger distance.  A human body is not aerodynamically suited to flying, so our mass won't keep us suspended long enough.  Take for instance driving in a car at 55 mph and dropping a feather out of the car wi!
 ndow.  It may float for longer than a rubber ball dropped out of the window, but it won't be propelled very far forward simply from the speed that it had when it was released.  First off, I'm no physicist, but that's how I would understand it to work.  

I'm all for using the strength as the factor in jumping.

Jon Woodman

>------- Original Message Follows -------
>From: "Kansas Jim" <ksjim at sdc.org>
>To: <torg at justintimeadventures.com>
>Subject: Re: [Torg] Jumping in Torg
>Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:16:08 -0700
>
>Benjmain Grant
>wrote:
>
>> In other words, if the superhero goes a vastly shorter distance than the
>> projectile, and the reason is *because* he has superpowers, that is bizarre,
>> even for supers.
>
><shrug> Show me a speedster in a comic book long jumping thousands of
>feet and I'll reconsider.
>
>Something to think about is that in the comics, what characters do we
>see with ridiculous jumping distances? Not the fast guys, it's the
>strong guys. A running start may help but it's strength, not speed,
>that's seen as the determining factor. I've looked over a bunch of
>superhero RPGs tonight and that's how they all approach it, jumping
>ability is based on a character's strength. If they even mention a
>running jump it does increase the distance jumped but the speed at
>which the person runs doesn't enter into the equation. Perhaps the
>jumping limit value should be based off of Strength rather than
>Dexterity? That'd dovetail nicely with speedsters not being shown in
>the comics as prodigious leapers, they may move really fast but they
>usually have normal human strength levels.
>
>-- 
>Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
>Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html
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