Science of Weather: iFLY Detroit
Have you ever wanted to go skydiving? Well, here's your chance in Novi. It's not traditional skydiving, jumping out of a plane. But here at iFLY Detroit, it's indoor skydiving! And you can go even when the weather is rainy or cloudy because it's indoors!
Marianne Debrito, lead STEM educator and bodyflight instructor says, "This is the ninth generation of this tunnel, which there is only one other of those in the United States so far. Very first tunnel in the in Michigan."
In this wind tunnel, a monitor shows you the current wind speed.
Marianne Debrito adds, "So we actually have like a pilot static tube in there that tests the actual real-time speed of the wind. And so we can see your terminal velocity that you would be flying at when you jump out of an airplane."
Now, Marianne focuses on teaching the physics behind the flight in iFLY's STEM field trip curriculum.
Marianne Debrito replies, "And we also get the opportunity to throw a bunch of different objects in there as well, not just human bodies flying in there, but what does it look like when a basketball is flying? When a teddy bear is flying or even like when we dump some water in there and it looks like it looks like rain, like paused in time. Right. So, like, we get to see what speeds different objects fly at and how stable they are, depending on what they're made out of or what shape they are as well."
Rami Helmi General Manager at iFLY Detroit says, "She throws the water in as she walks under it. Then there is only gravity. There's no more wind pushing that air up. So it comes back down. And the same thing with all the objects."
This is the only wind tunnel like this in the state of Michigan and I'm about to go in. Indoor skydiving is so much fun. And of course talking about the science behind it. Now that's the science of weather. In Novi, I'm meteorologist Kylee Miller.
