In reality, I was thinking that a haystack wouldn't have the linear relationship between stopping force and height that I used in making my calculations (so not anything like a bungee). However, Hooke's law provided a reasonable analog for the sake of argument. I think that it would be a logarithmic trend; at some point you would start to see a decrease in effectiveness of the next foot of hay you added.

It was fun to do and if anyone has any ideas about how they would do it, please tell me. It isn't very often my nerdy love of science and video games intersect.

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The way I think of this is not that the hay is providing some sort of stopping force, but rather the object (here it would be the jumper) would be transferring energy to the hay. A drag like force would then be the most logical choice to try first. I guess this line of thinking comes from my love of Lagrangian mechanics over Newtonian.

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Not a bad idea, using it as a drag force. What can I say? I'm a chemist first, and a physics nerd much further down the line.

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I see your point with the distances/heights; however, you could have just as easily forgotten about force and did a purely energy argument: you start out with all potential then as you fall you gain kinetic. You see how much energy must be dissipated by the "drag" force (aka hay). This will tell you how high the hay would have to be. That would be my take.

Also, I'm glad to hear that chemist at least appreciates physics. I have taught many chemistry majors who ask me "Why do I have to learn physics?" So, keep up your interest in physics :)

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I like your method, seems more elegant than the one I used. The only question is, what value would one assign to hay? (Also, I learned that in reality, a haystack as a cushion is an awful idea, as most of them have trees or vertical logs supporting them)

I love physics, it's a shame my college professors tried to ruin it.

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C'mon!

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Weeaboo Fighting Magic.

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Lots of variations that are not accounted for, and remember the hay does not need to stop him to 0 mph, the human body can fall against the ground at a decent speed and sustain, it just has to slow him down enough to survive the fall. Though I do agree that the piles of hay in the game wouldn't be anywhere near enough, I just think our estimates are a little too rough and don't consider enough factors. And at that height wind resistance is important, hell it might even help.

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Yeah, at the highest jumps wind resistance would be a factor. Especially with those flowing robes of his. They're pretty rough. The actual model would probably be a logarithmic trend as opposed to the linear one I used, but this seems to work pretty well for comparison's sake.

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How is that a "myth"? :)

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