IIRC certain very gifted basketball players have/had vertical jumps of over 4 feet. Consider a 6 foot tall hoops player; it is about another 18 inches or so of reach, but to dunk the ball you need to get the ball to clear the edge of the hoop, so subtract 6-10 inches of ball. That leaves about a foot of extra clearance. For the likes of Muggsy Bogues (5’ 3") to dunk (which he did, on several occasions, IIRC, or perhaps that was Spud Webb, 5’ 6") he would have to jump over 4 feet. Heck I’m six feet even, and despite having White Man’s disease I was able to touch the rim of a regulation hoop in my unbridled youth.
I don’t recall anyone having a vertical leap of 40", let alone 48". David Thompson, who wasn’t that tall (6’ 4"?), could put a quarter on the top of the backboard, and I’m pretty sure his leap was less than 40". Spud Webb, probably has unusually long arms for a short guy, could dunk, I believe (he won the slam dunk contest). Remember, when you’re dunking, your hands are way over your head.
A skydiver can definitely generate lift (by flattening out), but definitely not enough to remain in level flight. However, the pedantic definition of “flight” is neither the intent of the question posed by the o.p. nor exclusive. It’s perfectly acceptable to talk about ballistic objects like a jumper as being in flight.
I’d be a little cautious about using numbers from a high jumper, insofar as there is a lot of contortion that goes on in order to maximize the height at a particular point; while the overall fall rate at the c.g. is ballistically determinate (lift and drag being negligable) a jumper may drop his leg or twist, reducing actual time out of contact with the ground.
I don’t know if the claim of the o.p. (or rather, the show he was watching) is precisely true, but it’s clear that a human can’t remain in the air much longer than a second at best, and most people substantially less than that.
Stranger
That’s kind of silly. The OP put “flight” in scare-quotes, and then only in the title with its length limit; I think he, like everyone else in the thread, understands that the question isn’t really about flying in that sense.
It’s not quite that simple. A 2.45m highjumper doesn’t raise his center of mass by 2.45m; when crossing the bar his body is arched so that his CM is probably well below the bar. His CM’s ballistic ascent starts at about 1m above the ground, so it only rises by maybe 1.3-1.4m.
That’s still enough for a 1s total air-time, though. If a jumper’s CM starts at h=1m above the ground when he first leaves the ground, and he then rotates his body so that he lands horizontally, his CM can fall about 1m further than it rose. For a total air-time of t, the jumper needs to raise his CM by a height x satisfying the equation
sqrt(2x/g)+sqrt(2(x+h)/g)=t
(the first term is the rise time and the second term is the fall time). This has solution
x=(gt[sup]2[/sup]-2h)[sup]2[/sup]/(8gt[sup]2[/sup]);
with t=1s, h=1m, and g=9.8m/s[sup]2[/sup] this only needs x=0.78m. This is possible for good jumpers; I think this could even be done from a standing start.
If the jumper is required to land vertically, we have h=0 above, giving x=gt[sup]2[/sup]/8=1.22m, which is probably still possible for very good high-jumpers (the 2.45m jump probably needed this much height gain; Sotomayer is 1.94m tall).
Yes, well I was working with a mathematically perfect person the size of a point. I call him Little Mac.
:applause:
Hm. I suppose I could take off the flat level surface of the Empire State building and achieve “flight” for about 11 seconds before landing on my “feet.”
That work for you?
No it’s not clear what the OP wants for “flight” quotes or no quotes. Does the OP want the longest flight time for an olympic long jump or gymnastic tumble? No need to put “flight” in quotes. It is often referred to as flight time.
Google up human “flight” and see what’s talked about.
Dude, what part of
leaves you mystified? Bolding mine.
Sure it is. How come nobody else is having difficulty understanding the question?
The 1 second human “flight” part.
Maybe I’ll just “teleport” to the store. How fast could I do it, at an average walking pace?
Ooh, nobody better say anything about my use of “teleport” 'cause I put it in “quotes.”
Read my post again please-I estimated somewhere around an 16-24" reach above and beyond the player’s height.
A quick and dirty (and certainly unscientific) Google search showed vertical jumps ranging from 40" to 48+" for various players such a Michael Jordan and Spud Webb. Remember Webb won a slam dunk contest; given his 5 1/2’ frame, there wouldn’t be all that much clearance to allow him to dunk a 9" diameter ball on a 10’ tall basket even if he had a 48" vertical:
66" height + 18" reach + 48" jump - 9" ball = 123", a mere 3" clearance.
So my ultimate point is that some human somewhere, basketball player or other gifted athlete at his peak, almost certainly had a 48" vertical.
And while we’re on the subject I’ve rarely seen as much bandwidth nitpicking the letter of posts, and not just simply and pragmatically accepting their spirit, as I’ve seen here…
**Moderator Note: **
levdrakon, it’s pretty clear to everyone else that the OP didn’t choose words precisely. For the purposes of the thread, let’s assume the OP meant flight in an every day sense and wasn’t familiar with (or didn’t care about) the technical definition of flight. The rest of the posters are trying to respond to the OP’s expressed concern (“a human cannot jump up and stay in the air as long as a second”) and not the lead sentence of the post. Please do the same.
Gfactor, General Questions Moderator
It was crystal clear to me and every other person reading the thread except you. The problem is with you, not anyone else.
Maybe you should define “digging a hole.”
Look at this basketball dunking video. The very first player is in the air for >2 seconds before he touches the rim.
Rick, if I get to slow down the video too, I can get my own fat a$$ to actually “fly” indefinitely. 
I think the OP is talking about jumping (not flying, levdrakon–you must be a pedant’s nightmare) and also landing on one’s feet (so the Fosbury flop folks can stop dissecting that, too).
The clarification should be whether this is from a standing start–essentially a vertical jump–or a running start–essentially a long jump (but where you have to land on your feet and not your butt).
The vertical jump doesn’t seem possible. OTOH my gut is that a really good long jumper or a basketball player performing essentially the same move of a running start w/ max hang time might come close.
Surely there is some real-time video somewhere that would lay the OP’s question to rest…
On this vidio you can pause at exactly 4 seconds, and the jumper’s foot is just leaving the ground. At exactly five seconds, he is still in the air.
Not scientific, but fairly convincing.
Tris
What about this criterion from the OP? :
“Jumping from feet and landing back on feet”
I know some took the OP to task about using “flight” loosely, but this criterion seems pretty clear.
Well, I upon Googling, I see people arguing about Wilt, Michael, Spud or Dominique having vertical leaps of 48" or more, but nothing definitive. However, if you think that I’m nitpicking more than usual on the Dope, I’d say that you haven’t been reading all the threads. Dr. J has got to be up there also.
One of my customers sells athletic training equipment and programs. One of their early athletes had a measured standing vertical jump of 40 inches. He was 6’1”.
They have a video of him at a training seminar and as a demonstration he stands flat footed under a basketball backboard and jumps up and touches the top of his head to the bottom of the backboard and lands back on his feet. It looks like he actually bumps the bottom of the backboard pretty hard, meaning he would have gone a few inches higher if he hadn’t chosen to tap the board with his head.
I’ve just watched that video** and it looks like to me he spends about .8 seconds in the air.
This wasn’t a record jump for him, he had gone higher previously. And he might have increased his “hang time” a touch by pulling his legs up as he dropped, but that might violate the spirit of the OP.
But even with that, I think he’d only gotten another tenth of a second or so, maybe to one full second. And this was a world class athlete (at least in 1987). So if 1 second isn’t the max for a standing jump, I think it’s probably pretty close.
** If anyone is interested, I’ll ask tomorrow to see if it’s ok for me to post a link to the video.
Finagle and sturmhauke both mention the high jump record which is 2.45 meters, but the OP appears (to me at least) to be referring to the standing long jump, the record for which is only about1.90 meters. (sorry about the wiki links, they were the best I could find)
The standing part would seem to also preclude most basketball jumps.