Arkansas science teacher goes skydiving to teach students about gravity

Brett Baker, a science teacher at Ahlf Junior High School in Searcy, noticed that his eighth-grade class was struggling to grasp the concept of gravity. To help his eighth graders understand gravity, Brett Baker filmed himself skydiving and played the footage in class. And while he was swimming amidst the clouds, his students learned what gravity meant for real, as he described in a September 22, 2026, report by NBC-affiliated KARK 4 News.

An ingenious demonstration

“Last year I noticed there was a trend with a lot of kids, and they were wondering. They're having a hard time putting together that gravity’s an attractive force,” Baker said. “I was trying to figure out ways to, like, incorporate the idea that gravity is an attractive force and, like, a really good way to, like, talk about that, and I was like, oh, I’ll just go skydiving and video it.” He shared that he used the video of his skydiving trip to explain the concept of gravity.

The video, shared by the news outlet, shows Baker strapped to the skydiving harness system and diving amidst cotton candy clouds. While the video played in his classroom, he explained to his students how gravity was pulling him while he was among the clouds, how fast he was going, how high he was, and details like these.

When a lesson gets students asking questions

In a 2024 US survey by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, six in 10 K–12 students said that, when they felt most interested in what they were learning, it was because a teacher made the subject interesting or exciting. Baker hoped his skydiving video would do just that. Asked how the lesson went, he said his students began asking questions.

When asked whether the technique really worked out for these students, Baker said indeed it did. “They just started asking questions, and they’re curious, and that’s, I think, my biggest goal from it,” he said. Meanwhile, one of his students, named Noah Goodwin, remarked on the episode with a cute smile on his face. ”I didn’t think he would go skydiving just to teach us about gravity; I thought that was a really interesting way to teach about gravity,” said Goodwin.

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