Bouncing on a trampoline lets the jumper experience the interplay between weightlessness and large
forces on the body, as the motion changes between free fall and large acceleration in contact with
the trampoline bed. In this work, several groups of students were asked to draw graphs of elevation,
velocity and acceleration as a function of time, for two full jumps of the 2012 Olympic gold medal
trampoline routine by Rosannagh MacLennan. We hoped that earlier kinaesthetic experiences of
trampoline bouncing would help students make connections between the mathematical descriptions of
elevation, velocity and acceleration, which is known to be challenging. However, very few of the
student responses made reference to personal experiences of forces during bouncing. Most of the
responses could be grouped into a few categories, which are presented and discussed in the paper.
Although the time dependence of elevation was drawn relatively correctly in most cases, many of the
graphs of vel…