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.