From left are Norah Land, Colin Olsen, Eli Dukes and Cooper Myers, getting ready to launch their Barbie.

Scott Kleiman’s Kingsford Middle School eighth-grade class recently modeled a bungee jump using a Barbie doll and rubber bands.

The consideration of cord length is very important in a bungee jump. Too short and the jumper doesn’t get much of a thrill, too long and ouch. The activity had the students collecting data on smaller jumps within the classroom. The data was then put into a scatter plot. A best-fitting line was drawn. Using their line, students calculated a function that related the number of rubber bands to the distance that Barbie fell. Using this function, the students had to extrapolate — do the math — to find how many rubber bands were needed to give Barbie the most thrilling bungee jump 204 inches from the top rail of the stairwell at KMS.

Brooklyn Mann, Verity Martin and Vandan Pezzullo work on their equations.