.... Only stroboscopic pictures would reveal
the truth.
Zach
Actually a force plate or table would be very useful too in order to
detemine the magnitude and direction of the force applied by the athlete to
the surface from which they are springing.
While it is not always well transmitted to the athletes by coaches and
judges, most physical education depts have changed names to things like
Kinesiology and many faculty in these depts make as careful studies of
these motions and the human bodies concerned as any one in any of the
science depts. Their work is published in journals (if memory serves one
of the major ones is The Research Quarterly) and books (James Councilman's
book The Science of Swimming is quite good on the physics of the major
competitive strokes). You should be able to find these in most university
libraries.
Also, on the cats, a NASA astronaut was interested in figuring out how his
cat accomplished the feat of landing on its feet. There is some footage
from NASA on this. In particular Bob Fuller and I worked on a project
called Physics Vignettes originally published by John Wiley and Sons on
tape and videodisc. It is now available from ZTeck on CD-ROM. I believe
there was a vignette Bob worked on involving the NASA footage and then an
experiment with divers over a pool attempting to switch from a vertical
head up to a vertical head down position during a vertical fall. They did
not leave from a board or platform but started hanging by their hands above
the pool and attempted to enter the water vertical but now hands down and
feet up. It can be done.
Dewey
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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper: GHB, Uilleann
"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned." --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.
"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.
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