Physics of sports

Skateboard ollie

How can we use physics too improve a sports action?

When you see a professional athlete perform, do you think about how the moves they do actually work? When watching football, do you wonder how much force the quarterback throws the ball with, or what the velocity was when the receiver catches it? Most likely not. However, these concepts make up all of sports, so if you want to know how to improve your kick in soccer or jump shot in basketball, you're gonna want to study the physics that go into it.

Our physics of sports video

Our physics of sports video was an ollie on a skateboard. We wanted a unique and creative idea, so we chose something that everyone wants to know how to do.

The first step we took was creating a step by step of our video and what we were going to do in each scene.

We then decided what physics concept applied to each move in the ollie and how we were going to show them.

Construction logs

Script

physics of sports ollie

In filming, we each took turns saying what we wrote on the script and then assembled them so they flowed well together. In order to do the calculations though, I needed to learn how to do an ollie, and then get it recorded on camera. I practiced at home and finally got one that I was comfortable sharing, and that was what we used for our calculations. To calculate some of the velocity equations, we chose to use a video that was easy to measure

Our calculations

Force of impact-The force of impact is the amount of force that goes on when the board is touching the ground. We calculated the force of impact when the tail of the ollie hit the ground. We measured the time to be 0.01 seconds, and a force of 209.55 newtons of force. In order to make this easier to understand, in the video we decided to also have this number in pounds, so there was around 47 pounds of force being exerted on the board. Compared to the boards weight (5.6lbs) there was about 8 times the amount of force being exerted on the board compared to it's mass.

Horizontal velocity-Horizontal velocity is the speed that you are moving on the x-axis. For velocity components, we chose to use a clearer video in order to really see the physics movements. We measured the velocity to be 2.98 meters per second, and this shows that the man in the video was moving at 6.7 miles per hour.

Vertical velocity-Vertical velocity is the speed that you are moving on the y-axis. For our vertical velocity, we did the same thing. We ended up getting a vertical velocity of 1.96 meters per second, and this means the man in the video had a speed upwards of 4.4 miles per hour.

Total velocity-The total velocity is the speed over all, essentially how fast you are moving in both directions together. We calculated the total velocity to be 3.57 meters per second and in miles per hour that is about 8 miles per hour.

Conservation of momentum-A conservation of momentum is when there is momentum that stays constant. The conservation of momentum in our video is demonstrated when I crouch down on the board and move back up. This demonstrates my momentum shifting down, and then being brought back up whilst slamming down the tail to get the jump and go into the air. This demonstrates a conservation of momentum because throughout the ollie, our momentum carries us upwards and is the reason that the ollie is possible.

Other physics concepts measured

Force-We calculated the force that my foot was throwing down on the board in order to do the ollie, and got 47 pounds of force (209 Newtons). The amount of force exerted on the tail of the board is the same amount of force that will come up on the nose, essentially making the board a lever.

Velocity at different intervals (L4)-To measure how much velocity occurred at different levels, we measured the initial velocity

What did I learn from this project?

Peaks {

Pits {

I think that during this project, I found out 2 main things I need to work on. One skill I improved during this project was my leadership. Throughout the project, I led my group to success, for example I told them what to say in the video and distributed jobs to each member. I think that this helps my collaboration skills, however I will discuss how I also learned about collaboration in this project in my pits.

I also learned how to manage my time better during this using the work log to see what I will be doing next. For example, I would plan out what I would be doing for the day and that gave me better motivation to finish and definitely improved my critical thinking.

The main pit that I had was that I didn't use my teammates well. I think that I tried to do the project myself and didn't really think about if I could ask my teammates for help if I needed to solve an equation instead of going straight to the teacher. For example, I would write today's plan in the work log, and instead of asking my teammates what we should put on it, I would fill it out and then let my teammates copy off mine. I realized this towards the end of the project and started asking my teammates for help, and this really helped me because they actually knew the answered most of the time, which I always assumed they didn't. I think I could have done this better, and another thing I can improve on is the quality of my work, as I feel like some of it was sloppy and I could have improved.

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