In the classic video game “Super Mario Bros.,” everyone’s favorite plumber, Mario, runs off a ledge to avoid a Goomba.

When Mario falls in his virtual world, he accelerates with a speed nine times greater than earth’s natural gravitational pull. In other words, the level of impact upon hitting the ground, according to Binghamton University physics Professor Chuck Nelson, would be like “jumping from a ledge nine times higher in the present earth.”

During their senior year at Brooklyn’s Midwood High School, two students, Artem Gindin and Adam Lefky, examined Mario’s inhuman landings in “Super Mario Gravity,” a study of gravity in Mario video games. Recently featured on Forbes.com, the study uses three algebraic equations to determine Mario’s rate of gravitational acceleration while falling.

The students, who are now sophomores majoring in biochemistry at BU, used a video camera to record clips of Mario falling from ledges in games ranging from “Super Mario World” (1991) on the Super Nintendo to “Super Paper Mario” (2007) for the Nintendo Wii.

Each clip was run through QuickTime Video Player to count the number of frames in the video. This amount was then divided by the frames per second rate of the game to determine the time it took Mario to land.

The students then measured the distance of his falls by stacking images of Mario on top of each other and finally multiplying the distance and time to find his gravitational acceleration.

Results showed recent Mario games had levels of gravitational acceleration closer to that of Earth’s, which is 9.8 meters per second squared.

In 1988’s “Super Mario Bros. 2,” Mario fell at an in-game rate of 108 meters per second squared, 11 times Earth’s gravitational acceleration. In 2007’s “Super Paper Mario,” he fell at a rate of 49 meters per second squared, only four times Earth’s.

Moreover, the study showed Mario could jump 11 times higher than any human on Earth.

Both students believe as video game consoles become more powerful, the realism of games will increase.

“Video games are constantly trying to become ‘more realistic,’ so perhaps the next step is having them be physically accurate to a degree,” Lefky said.

As for Mario’s inhuman abilities in his older games, Lefky thinks Nintendo was only trying to create a fun experience for gamers.

“How interesting would it be if Mario had the normal 6-inch human jump?” he said. “Mario would barely make it high enough to step on a Goomba, much less jump over a bottomless pit.”

The group did its research in 2007 for an extra credit project in a high school physics class. The study has since been circulating around the Internet and was published in teacher Glenn Elert’s “The Physics Factbook,” an online encyclopedia of scientific essays.

“We were just sitting around thinking what would be a fun idea for the project,” Gindin said. “And the idea of Mario, gravity and video games just came to us naturally.”

It only took five hours, a camera, a few video game consoles and controllers and some math to complete the study.

“I wish they did this kind of research in college,” Ginden said. “It makes physics fun and manageable.”

Full results of the study can be found at hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/mariogravity.shtml.