Just like he did in London last summer (click here for my blog post on that match), China's Zhang Jike defeated fellow countryman Wang Hao in the finals of a major table tennis tournament, this time the 2013 World Table Tennis Championships in Paris. What fascinates me about a match featuring Zhang and Wang is the contrast in playing styles. Zhang uses a shakehand grip whereas Wang employs a penhold grip. The shankehand grip is so named because one appears to be shaking hands with one's racket The penhold grip is also well named because one appears to hold the handle of one's racket as one might hold a pen. In such a grip, the racket appears "upside down" to many novice players.
What astounds me about Wang's play is that he is able to use the backside of his racket for his backhand. As a less-than-stellar penhold player myself, I use a racket with no playing surface on the backside, which is fairly standard for a penhold player. My backhand is by far weaker than my forehand, which is why Wang's style intrigues me. His wrist appears rubbery to me as I watch him execute hard backhand smashes. I can only dream of such backhand skill!
Despite Wang's backhand prowess, he had to settle for second behind Zhang, who has a backhand shot as good anybody playing today. Zhang makes use of a slightly less spongy surface on his racket so as to ensure more translational kinetic energy transfer to the ball at the expense of a little rotational kinetic energy, meaning he loves to play fast.
Table tennis at the highest levels involves smashes hard enough to lead to air drag greater than five times the weight of the ball and a Magnus force, which is due to the ball's spin, greater than twice the ball's weight. That's why you will see players sometimes playing well back of the table's edge -- the ball moves fast with lots of spin, meaning it curves quite a bit more than with gravity acting alone.
The women's final of the World Championships saw Li Xiaoxia, the gold medalist in London, defeat Liu Shiwen, both also from China. Li and Liu each use a shakehand grip.
If you happen upon some table tennis while flipping channels on your television, watch for a little while and pay close attention to the way each player holds his or her racket. Note, too, the type of surface on each side of each player's racket.
23 May 2013
02 May 2013
Celebrate reason today!
Today is the National Day of Reason in the US. Started ten years ago, this day represents a push back against the National Day of Prayer. The separation of church and state was an important part of our country's founding. People are free to assemble and practice whatever religious beliefs they hold, and I would never want that freedom to disappear. There are many people, however, who think it unconstitutional to use taxpayer money to fund a day of prayer. As one of those people, I wish to add my voice to those who value reason and view it as a human being's greatest virtue.
To celebrate reason today, I will introduce my students to the beauty of Fourier analysis. That we can untangle the complexity of bizarre wave patterns is something that always puts a chill on my spine. Doing science well means setting aside a fear of being ignorant, asking questions, investigating the natural world, and then letting data and evidence take you to conclusions that may or may not make you happy. Your opinion of the conclusions reached by good science has no effect on those conclusions. Fourier's work survives nearly 183 years after he died because of the reason and brilliance he put into it. If you ever do any type of signal processing, be sure to thank Joseph Fourier!
If you are interested in reading more about the National Day of Reason, click here.
To celebrate reason today, I will introduce my students to the beauty of Fourier analysis. That we can untangle the complexity of bizarre wave patterns is something that always puts a chill on my spine. Doing science well means setting aside a fear of being ignorant, asking questions, investigating the natural world, and then letting data and evidence take you to conclusions that may or may not make you happy. Your opinion of the conclusions reached by good science has no effect on those conclusions. Fourier's work survives nearly 183 years after he died because of the reason and brilliance he put into it. If you ever do any type of signal processing, be sure to thank Joseph Fourier!
If you are interested in reading more about the National Day of Reason, click here.
29 April 2013
The Path of a Home Run
As of Sunday, 28 April 2013, the longest home run hit in the Major Leagues so far was hit by Anthony Rizzo of the Chicago Cubs. The left-hander hit a shot off righty Alexi Ogando of the Texas Rangers on a rainy day in Wrigley Field on the 18th of April in the bottom of the third inning with nobody out and a man on first. Video of the home run may be found here. Though the ball hit the back of the bleachers, an estimate of where the ball would have landed on the ground (really North Sheffield Avenue) has been made. A great website that tracks all Major League home runs is Hit Tracker, which may be found here. If one sorts all home runs by true distance, one finds that Rizzo's shot would have traveled 475 ft (145 m) horizontally. Also provided are the launch speed off the bat, which was 115.0 mph (51.4 m/s = 185 km/hr), and the launch angle measured from the horizontal, which was 24.5 degrees. The maximum height of 86 ft (26 m) is also given.
With all the great data provided, anyone can play with real home-run trajectories. I describe how one may do this in an aerodynamics review article I wrote that just appeared online (click here to access the paper). By choosing the appropriate drag and lift coefficients, I can fit a model trajectory to one that matches the data on the website. I use constant aerodynamic coefficients as a first approximation, and I ignore the tiny difference between initial and final heights (about a meter, which is only about 0.7% the size of the horizontal range). My model doesn't include wind or effects of rain, but it does give quite reasonable estimates of the sizes of the forces on the ball while in flight.
The buoyant force on the baseball was just under 0.2% of the ball's weight (my online article has a typo; the buoyant force I consider there should have been 0.15% of the ball's weight instead of 1.5%). Clearly that force isn't a big player here! The drag force is about 1.5 times the ball's weight just after the ball left Rizzo's bat. If you solve a projectile motion problem with "ignore air resistance" in the problem statement, know you are not solving a realistic problem! The initial lift force, which is due to the roughly 2000 rpm backspin the ball had when it left the bat (only around 500 rpm when the ball landed), was about 80% of the ball's weight. Ignoring the effect of the ball's spin is also highly unrealistic!
The graph below shows three trajectories (click on the image for a larger size).
With all the great data provided, anyone can play with real home-run trajectories. I describe how one may do this in an aerodynamics review article I wrote that just appeared online (click here to access the paper). By choosing the appropriate drag and lift coefficients, I can fit a model trajectory to one that matches the data on the website. I use constant aerodynamic coefficients as a first approximation, and I ignore the tiny difference between initial and final heights (about a meter, which is only about 0.7% the size of the horizontal range). My model doesn't include wind or effects of rain, but it does give quite reasonable estimates of the sizes of the forces on the ball while in flight.
The buoyant force on the baseball was just under 0.2% of the ball's weight (my online article has a typo; the buoyant force I consider there should have been 0.15% of the ball's weight instead of 1.5%). Clearly that force isn't a big player here! The drag force is about 1.5 times the ball's weight just after the ball left Rizzo's bat. If you solve a projectile motion problem with "ignore air resistance" in the problem statement, know you are not solving a realistic problem! The initial lift force, which is due to the roughly 2000 rpm backspin the ball had when it left the bat (only around 500 rpm when the ball landed), was about 80% of the ball's weight. Ignoring the effect of the ball's spin is also highly unrealistic!
The graph below shows three trajectories (click on the image for a larger size).
The dotted curve is what the trajectory would have looked like in vacuum. That trajectory is nearly 41% too far. If one includes drag, but not lift, one gets the dashed trajectory. But that one is just over 17% too short. The Goldilocks trajectory is the solid trajectory, which is my model of Rizzo's home run. I missed the actual range by just 0.005% and the actual maximum height by 0.05%. I could, of course, tweak my drag and lift coefficients to do even better, and I could include the slight difference in launch and landing heights, but pursuing this much further is silly because I don't know the true atmospheric conditions on that rainy day in Chicago. The fun part is getting a trajectory that matches the real-world trajectory quite well and then studying the forces involved.
20 April 2013
Sports and Terrorism
"I don't have a single American friend, I don't understand them."
-- Boston terror suspect, killed on 19 April 2013
For anyone having trouble understanding Americans, allow me to help you. Nobody can help the person who authored the words quoted above, and it's doubtful anyone can help his younger brother, who is in custody right now. I couldn't possibly speculate on the motives of those involved in what happened in Boston this past week. People in various agencies will do their best to sort all that out. What immediately stood out for me was the contrast between the scene at the conclusion of a marathon and the desire to end life.
I have never run a marathon, never come close to running anywhere near 26-plus miles (42-plus km) in a single day. One of my cousins did it, and I was extremely proud of and amazed by what he did. Imagine what it takes to run a marathon. Weeks and weeks of training, disciplined diet, targeted exercises, and putting one's mind into the proper place to endure such a grueling task are all part of the preparation. People who run marathons do so for a variety of reasons. They may want to improve fitness, achieve a goal they thought unreachable, or maybe they hope to inspire someone else. From what marathon runners have told me, crossing that finish line is a special moment. Runners feel great about themselves and loved ones are inspired by what they've just witnessed. The finish line of a marathon is a celebration.
On 15 April 2013, the finish line of the Boston Marathon turned from celebration to tragedy. One of the great days in sports became a day during which people were killed and other people were maimed. For anyone who doesn't understand Americans, or, more generally, people capable of courage and empathy, traits in the majority of human beings, regardless of nationality, look at what happened this past week. Immediately after the bombs went off, people ran into the smoke to help people they had never met. Nobody was asked what religion they belong to, what political party they support, or what sports team they support. None of that mattered. People simply helped their fellow creatures because those creatures were suffering.
Think about the medical professionals who tended to the wounded at the bombing scene, during ambulance transport, and at hospitals. Many more health professionals have a lot of work ahead of them as they care for those physically and mentally scarred. All will be helped and it won't matter what color the victims are, how the victims feel about various social issues, or what the victims' countries of origin happen to be.
Consider the images of the large number of law enforcement officers charged with keeping people safe and hunting down the suspects. Those officers were made up of people of both sexes, all colors, numerous religious and nonreligious beliefs, political alliances, and so on. A police officer is charged with protecting people, even people who may be as different from that officer as one can imagine.
Have those who don't understand us seen images from sporting events? It was common to see baseball and basketball games with slogans like "We are all Boston" from shirts to big stadium screens. As a passionate alumnus of both Vanderbilt University and Indiana University, I root for my Commodores and my Hoosiers. I especially root for my teams when we play against bitter rivals like Tennessee and Purdue. But if terrorism ever hits my rivals' campuses in Knoxville or West Lafayette, I'll feel solidarity with those who suffer and I'll want to help. When people were murdered at Virginia Tech in 2007, I was warmed by the fact that not only did my own school help, but so did Virginia Tech's rival, the University of Virginia. When tornadoes tore through Tuscaloosa in 2011, people from Auburn came to help, and there is no more bitter rivalry in sports than the one between Alabama and Auburn.
Nothing I write here is meant to suggest that all sports fans or all Americans are perfect people. Many of my fellow creatures are quite capable of behaving badly toward one another. There are roughly 45 murders per day in my country, a number embarrassingly too high by 45. But most of us are able to put aside tribalism for solidarity when circumstances demand such a replacement. We may feel more comfortable around those who look like ourselves or share common beliefs or root for the same sporting teams or vote for the same political parties. It is natural to feel comfort in similarity and caution when facing differences. A long, long time ago, it helped that our ancestors felt solidarity around each other and wary of lions and tigers, to give a cartoonish example. In civilized 21st-century societies around the globe, people are enlightened enough to know that some differences among humans are trite and some differences help make societies stronger. For those not lucky enough to have born into enlightened societies, know that there are many of us who feel solidarity with those seeking freedom.
Sport often brings out the best in people. Athletes try to better themselves and inspire and entertain others. The events in Boston gave us a vivid contrast between the best and worst of what human beings can do. For those who don't understand America, I urge you to find a television and watch the Boston Marathon in 2014. Bombs and the random taking of human life did not create the solidarity most Americans feel for people in need, they merely revealed what was already there.
13 April 2013
Two Great Birthdays Today
On my drive to the gym this morning, I passed right by Poplar Forest, which was Thomas Jefferson's retreat home. Just over a mile from my own home, Poplar Forest greets me during my drives to my place of work, Lynchburg College, as well as my trips to the gym. Today's pass by Jefferson's second home got me thinking more about him because he was born on the 13th of April in 1743 (because Jefferson was born before the 1752 calendar adjustment, his birthday is sometimes given as 2 April 1743). Can you even imagine what the world was like 270 years ago when Jefferson was born? I consider myself fortunate to have been born in the 20th century in a country that Jefferson played such a pivotal role in founding. Born out of the Philadelphia enlightenment of the latter half of the 18th century, my country has codified laws that protect our freedoms. We are free to think what we want and pursue happiness. Our founders, particularly Jefferson, saw the need to separate church and state, an idea integral to what makes my country great.
Another person I think about today is Christopher Hitchens, who was also born on the the 13th of April (in 1949). One of my favorite modern writers, Hitchens moved me to think about politics and philosophy in so many new and different ways. Though he died at the end of 2011, I continue to read his writings and listen to his speeches and debates (YouTube is a great resource!). I am in awe reading and listening to Hitchens because I know that it would take me the rest of my life to even be half as well read as he was. I recently read Thomas Jefferson: Author of America by Christopher Hitchens (get it here at Amazon). I can't recommend it highly enough.
The two aforementioned polymaths certainly had their flaws, but one indelible character trait they shared was a lifelong commitment to learning. I have found that I do better science when I exercise my mind in nonscientific arenas. Studying history, philosophy, politics, and so forth have helped me think in better ways about how I approach problems in science. Both Jefferson and Hitchens were well traveled. I did not take my first real steps away from my own country until I was 30 years old. Living in another country and visiting a half dozen other countries have opened my mind considerably. I've also learned how people in other countries approach scientific problems, which has benefited me greatly in the past decade. If you've never done so, I urge you to see how other people in countries foreign to your own live and do things -- it's well worth it!
Earning high school, college, and universities degrees are significant achievements. But I've always thought that degrees are merely the keys that open doors to opportunities to learn even more. Don't ever walk across a graduation stage and think that learning is finally over and you can relax. Too much enjoyment of life awaits you if you choose to keep learning.
Another person I think about today is Christopher Hitchens, who was also born on the the 13th of April (in 1949). One of my favorite modern writers, Hitchens moved me to think about politics and philosophy in so many new and different ways. Though he died at the end of 2011, I continue to read his writings and listen to his speeches and debates (YouTube is a great resource!). I am in awe reading and listening to Hitchens because I know that it would take me the rest of my life to even be half as well read as he was. I recently read Thomas Jefferson: Author of America by Christopher Hitchens (get it here at Amazon). I can't recommend it highly enough.
The two aforementioned polymaths certainly had their flaws, but one indelible character trait they shared was a lifelong commitment to learning. I have found that I do better science when I exercise my mind in nonscientific arenas. Studying history, philosophy, politics, and so forth have helped me think in better ways about how I approach problems in science. Both Jefferson and Hitchens were well traveled. I did not take my first real steps away from my own country until I was 30 years old. Living in another country and visiting a half dozen other countries have opened my mind considerably. I've also learned how people in other countries approach scientific problems, which has benefited me greatly in the past decade. If you've never done so, I urge you to see how other people in countries foreign to your own live and do things -- it's well worth it!
Earning high school, college, and universities degrees are significant achievements. But I've always thought that degrees are merely the keys that open doors to opportunities to learn even more. Don't ever walk across a graduation stage and think that learning is finally over and you can relax. Too much enjoyment of life awaits you if you choose to keep learning.
09 April 2013
Great national title game!
Congratulations to the Louisville Cardinals for beating Michigan and winning the men's national title in college basketball. A great game was played tonight, and it was tough seeing either team lose. I've got friends and family from Michigan and they are certainly disappointed. Don't hang your heads, Wolverines fans! Your team had a fantastic year and is bound to be great for the next few seasons given how young its players are. As an Indiana alumnus, I fear how good Michigan will continue to be.
For those itching for a little basketball science, check out The Physics of Basketball by John J Fontanella (click here for the Amazon page). My publisher, The Johns Hopkins University Press, publishes Fontanella's book. It's a fun read!
The Louisville women will try to match the men's team when they take on UConn tomorrow night. UConn will be very tough to beat. Can Louisville do it two nights in a row?
For those itching for a little basketball science, check out The Physics of Basketball by John J Fontanella (click here for the Amazon page). My publisher, The Johns Hopkins University Press, publishes Fontanella's book. It's a fun read!
The Louisville women will try to match the men's team when they take on UConn tomorrow night. UConn will be very tough to beat. Can Louisville do it two nights in a row?
29 March 2013
The morning after ... a great day!
After watching my Hoosiers play their worst game of the year last night in losing to Syracuse, I spent a mostly sleepless night wondering why my team couldn't hit the broad side of barn. I got up early, kissed my younger daughter, and informed her that Indiana lost last night. She was disappointed, but happy that the weekend is here. Sports are great, and I live and die with my teams, but life is so much more than sports. It doesn't feel that way after a terrible loss, but life really is great. We get one shot at life and each day needs to be special. If your day doesn't feel special by the time noon rolls around, do something about it. Seriously, take charge and don't let Saturday get here without doing or thinking or playing in a special way.
What will make my day special? Well, my daughter got me off to a fantastic start. In less than half an hour, I get to talk to my introductory physics class about electromagnetic induction and Faraday's law -- my favorite topic of the semester! If understanding how modern economies are maintained doesn't give you a chill on your back, you're not paying attention. If seeing energy conservation in a little minus sign doesn't give you pause at the wonder of how the universe works, you're not trying hard enough. The time and effort spent on learning about Faraday's discovery will be well worth it -- I promise. Once Faraday realized that changing magnetic field lines through a coil induces a current in that coil, humanity was ready to undergo a revolution in thought and in how we live.
So, yes, last night's loss stung me. But, today is a special day because I get to share the wonder of the universe with some great kids.
What will make my day special? Well, my daughter got me off to a fantastic start. In less than half an hour, I get to talk to my introductory physics class about electromagnetic induction and Faraday's law -- my favorite topic of the semester! If understanding how modern economies are maintained doesn't give you a chill on your back, you're not paying attention. If seeing energy conservation in a little minus sign doesn't give you pause at the wonder of how the universe works, you're not trying hard enough. The time and effort spent on learning about Faraday's discovery will be well worth it -- I promise. Once Faraday realized that changing magnetic field lines through a coil induces a current in that coil, humanity was ready to undergo a revolution in thought and in how we live.
So, yes, last night's loss stung me. But, today is a special day because I get to share the wonder of the universe with some great kids.
12 March 2013
Parallel Blogs
My college was interested in having me put my blog posts on its blog site. I will thus copy posts from here to my Lynchburg College Red Chair Blog site, which can be found by clicking here. This blogspot site remains my primary blog site.
11 March 2013
When one second feels like forever ...
My beloved Indiana Hoosiers basketball team faced a tough challenge yesterday. We were to play a tenacious Michigan team on its home court with the Big Ten conference title on the line. A loss, and we would tie with three other teams for the league crown, including Michigan. A win, and we would have the title all to ourselves, something we've not had in 20 years.
As a myopic fan, my blood pressure rises and falls with each play. Successes and failures are magnified to, admittedly, insane heights. Any die-hard sports fan reading this knows exactly what I mean. You know all the implications of winning and losing, and you know them well in advance of any game you watch. If your team wins, you show up for work the next day with a big smile on your face, and you are dying to talk about your team's victory. If your team loses, you get to work and feel like eyes are upon you. Are there fans of the team that beat you who are anxious to "ask" you about the game? Of course you want to talk about the loss, as if conversation can help you understand what happened. This is all lunacy, but isn't is nice to have things in your life about which you feel so much passion? After my family and my work, I'm thrilled being passionate about college basketball; I'm a true fanatic.
The game went back and forth. We got up seven early; Michigan was up 11 with about five minutes left in the first half. We cut that lead to three by halftime. Both teams had bursts of excellence and seemingly longer stretches of futility. The second half was a whirlwind of missed shots and mistakes by both teams. There were also plenty of fantastic plays as each team kept claiming the lead.
Michigan was up five points with about 45 seconds left and I thought we had lost. We had missed some shots and turned the ball over twice in the past minute and a half to get ourselves in a hole. In that final 45 seconds, Michigan would not score again and Indiana's Cody Zeller would account for all six of IU's points. We won by a single a point. My kids and I were going bananas.
What made the game especially gut-wrenching for fans of both teams was the final possession by Michigan. Click here to see our final basket and Michigan's attempt to win it. Michigan's great point guard, Trey Burke, missed a tough shot near the basket. Jordan Morgan was in perfect position for a tip-in, but the ball rolled on the rim for what seemed like an eternity, only to fall out of the hoop.
To understand what happened on the final play, I turned on the physics side of my head. The image below shows the ball precariously perched on the rim after Morgan's tip-back (click on the image for a larger view).
As passionate as I am about Indiana basketball, I never want to pour salt in an opponent's gaping wound created by a tough loss. I've got good friends and even some family members who are fans of Michigan. They are as sickened by the loss as I would be if the ball had gone in. Agony and ecstasy came down to mere millimeters. My team is lucky to have won.
As a myopic fan, my blood pressure rises and falls with each play. Successes and failures are magnified to, admittedly, insane heights. Any die-hard sports fan reading this knows exactly what I mean. You know all the implications of winning and losing, and you know them well in advance of any game you watch. If your team wins, you show up for work the next day with a big smile on your face, and you are dying to talk about your team's victory. If your team loses, you get to work and feel like eyes are upon you. Are there fans of the team that beat you who are anxious to "ask" you about the game? Of course you want to talk about the loss, as if conversation can help you understand what happened. This is all lunacy, but isn't is nice to have things in your life about which you feel so much passion? After my family and my work, I'm thrilled being passionate about college basketball; I'm a true fanatic.
The game went back and forth. We got up seven early; Michigan was up 11 with about five minutes left in the first half. We cut that lead to three by halftime. Both teams had bursts of excellence and seemingly longer stretches of futility. The second half was a whirlwind of missed shots and mistakes by both teams. There were also plenty of fantastic plays as each team kept claiming the lead.
Michigan was up five points with about 45 seconds left and I thought we had lost. We had missed some shots and turned the ball over twice in the past minute and a half to get ourselves in a hole. In that final 45 seconds, Michigan would not score again and Indiana's Cody Zeller would account for all six of IU's points. We won by a single a point. My kids and I were going bananas.
What made the game especially gut-wrenching for fans of both teams was the final possession by Michigan. Click here to see our final basket and Michigan's attempt to win it. Michigan's great point guard, Trey Burke, missed a tough shot near the basket. Jordan Morgan was in perfect position for a tip-in, but the ball rolled on the rim for what seemed like an eternity, only to fall out of the hoop.
To understand what happened on the final play, I turned on the physics side of my head. The image below shows the ball precariously perched on the rim after Morgan's tip-back (click on the image for a larger view).
"The Rock," as a basketball is sometimes called, is seen with the Michigan logo on it. According to my timing, the ball rolled around the front of rim for a time of about one second. A basketball has a diameter at least 9.39 in (23.85 cm) and at most 9.55 in (24.26 cm). The black channels you see on the ball cannot be more than 1/4 in (0.635 cm) deep. The metal ring that comprises the hoop is 18 in (45.74 cm) in diameter; the ring itself is about 5/8 in (1.59 cm) in diameter.
What forces did the "The Rock" feel while the IU/Michigan game was in doubt? The ball's weight is between 20 ounces (5.56 N) and 22 ounces (6.12 N). Taking an average weight and an average ball diameter, the buoyant force on the ball is about 1.5% of the ball's weight. If the ball rolled on about 30% of the rim, the ball moved along 17 in (43 cm) of rim in roughly one second. That results in an average speed of around 1.4 ft/s or 0.96 mph (1.6 km/hr). Air resistance on the Michigan shot would have been small while the ball was on the rim, and it would have caused the ball to slow a little while rolling. The normal force from the rim would have been comparable to the ball's weight. Friction between ball and rim would have reduced both the rolling rate and the transnational speed of the ball, arresting the motion slightly to allow a gravitational torque to send the ball into the hoop.
What Michigan needed was a little more lever arm on the gravitational torque on the ball. We are unstable if our center of gravity is outside our feet. Had the line of the ball's weight vector been more in the hoop than through the rim or just outside it, Michigan would have won. Of course, the torque created has to arrest motion that takes the ball out of the hoop. Imagine a ball travelling fast over the hoop -- an air ball. The ball's weight vector will pass through he hoop, but the ball won't go in because it would have been moving too fast over the hoop.
As passionate as I am about Indiana basketball, I never want to pour salt in an opponent's gaping wound created by a tough loss. I've got good friends and even some family members who are fans of Michigan. They are as sickened by the loss as I would be if the ball had gone in. Agony and ecstasy came down to mere millimeters. My team is lucky to have won.
18 February 2013
Congrats to Australia!
Australia dominated West Indies to win the Women's Cricket World Cup. The win marks the sixth overall for the Southern Stars. Congratulations to Australia!
There is a great deal of fascinating physics in the sport of cricket. A lot of research has focused on cricket ball aerodynamics. My introduction to that line of research came in the form of well-written papers by Rabindra D Mehta of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Mehta's classic 1985 paper "Aerodynamics of Sports Balls" in Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics (vol 17, pp 151-189) describes swing bowling. His 2005 paper "An overview of cricket ball swing" in Sports Engineering (vol 8, pp 181-192) has cogent descriptions of reverse swing, a phenomenon achieved by fast (over 90 mph = 145 km/hr) bowlers or with balls that have been strategically scuffed. Look up those papers if you want more details than what follows.
The side-to-side movement of a cricket ball boils down to getting an asymmetric deflection of air off the back side of the ball. The rough seams usually help delay the separation of the boundary layer of air from the ball. If you've ever thrown a Whiffle Ball, you know that the ball deflects toward the holes, ie the rougher part of the ball's surface. Air moving over a cricket ball that has a seam predominately on one side and a smooth side on the other will make the ball move toward the seam side. The reverse of that effect can happen if the ball is thrown very fast, fast enough that air flow over the entire ball is turbulent. In that situation, the seams actually serve to help separate the boundary layer closer to the front of the ball compared to the smooth side. That leads to reverse swing.
Cricket news doesn't make for much water-cooler chat in the US. In countries like India, Australia, and England (just to name a few), sports fans care a great deal about cricket. Though I played cricket only a few times while in graduate school, I enjoy following the World Cup for each gender. I especially love all the great physics to be learned in studying cricket!
There is a great deal of fascinating physics in the sport of cricket. A lot of research has focused on cricket ball aerodynamics. My introduction to that line of research came in the form of well-written papers by Rabindra D Mehta of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Mehta's classic 1985 paper "Aerodynamics of Sports Balls" in Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics (vol 17, pp 151-189) describes swing bowling. His 2005 paper "An overview of cricket ball swing" in Sports Engineering (vol 8, pp 181-192) has cogent descriptions of reverse swing, a phenomenon achieved by fast (over 90 mph = 145 km/hr) bowlers or with balls that have been strategically scuffed. Look up those papers if you want more details than what follows.
The side-to-side movement of a cricket ball boils down to getting an asymmetric deflection of air off the back side of the ball. The rough seams usually help delay the separation of the boundary layer of air from the ball. If you've ever thrown a Whiffle Ball, you know that the ball deflects toward the holes, ie the rougher part of the ball's surface. Air moving over a cricket ball that has a seam predominately on one side and a smooth side on the other will make the ball move toward the seam side. The reverse of that effect can happen if the ball is thrown very fast, fast enough that air flow over the entire ball is turbulent. In that situation, the seams actually serve to help separate the boundary layer closer to the front of the ball compared to the smooth side. That leads to reverse swing.
Cricket news doesn't make for much water-cooler chat in the US. In countries like India, Australia, and England (just to name a few), sports fans care a great deal about cricket. Though I played cricket only a few times while in graduate school, I enjoy following the World Cup for each gender. I especially love all the great physics to be learned in studying cricket!
12 February 2013
Enjoy Darwin Day!
Today marks the 204th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin. In the 74,510 days since Darwin's birth, our growing understanding of life has given us remarkable ways to view our place in the universe. One aspect of that understanding that particularly fascinates me is our kinship with all living creatures. What an exciting way to think about the natural world!
The scientific pursuit of truth involves the acquisition of data and evidence to support propositions. We need not "believe" a scientific proposition. If data and evidence don't exist to support a given proposition, that proposition won't be accepted as a description of nature. Scientists go where the evidence takes us, and we do not fear overturning previously-held ideas. We continually try to falsify claims; failure to do so for a particular claim leads us to the conclusion that that claim glimpses a truth in nature. We accept what we find whether we like the results or not. Removing confirmation bias and solipsism is not always easy, but good science requires it. Galileo Galilei supposedly said "eppur si muove" prior to the Inquisition. Most likely apocryphal, "and yet it moves," in reference to the Earth's motion around the sun, the remark is now used to get the point across that our beliefs are irrelevant when it comes to data and evidence acquired through scientific inquiry.
The evidence to support evolution is overwhelming. It does not require "belief," even though people are often asked if they "believe" in evolution. Denying evolution is tantamount to denying, for example, what we know about gravity. A Gallup Poll published last year (click here for the story) reveals an embarrassing low percentage of US citizens who accept the scientific claims associated with evolution. A 2006 article in Science showed public acceptance of evolution in the US to be next to last among the 34 countries surveyed (click here for the country chart). The richest country in human history with the ability to provide public education to its citizens should be chagrined by its lack of scientific literacy, especially given that On the Origin of Species was published almost 154 years ago.
The good news is that days like today have meaning. We celebrate the ideas that revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. With the ever-increasing advance of technology and the spread of information, we should be hopeful that scientific literacy will improve. Darwin Day helps in this effort. People like Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey help, too. A physicist, Holt led the effort to have today recognized as Darwin Day in the US. Kudos to Dr Holt!
If you know very little about Darwin's ideas, there are many easy-to-read books out there. I love The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins (click here to get it). Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish (click here to get it) is also a wonderful read with a concluding chapter that you'll want to read twice (at least!). Never feel ashamed if you are ignorant about something. Knowing everything would mean never being able to experience the thrill of learning.
Have a great Darwin Day!
The scientific pursuit of truth involves the acquisition of data and evidence to support propositions. We need not "believe" a scientific proposition. If data and evidence don't exist to support a given proposition, that proposition won't be accepted as a description of nature. Scientists go where the evidence takes us, and we do not fear overturning previously-held ideas. We continually try to falsify claims; failure to do so for a particular claim leads us to the conclusion that that claim glimpses a truth in nature. We accept what we find whether we like the results or not. Removing confirmation bias and solipsism is not always easy, but good science requires it. Galileo Galilei supposedly said "eppur si muove" prior to the Inquisition. Most likely apocryphal, "and yet it moves," in reference to the Earth's motion around the sun, the remark is now used to get the point across that our beliefs are irrelevant when it comes to data and evidence acquired through scientific inquiry.
The evidence to support evolution is overwhelming. It does not require "belief," even though people are often asked if they "believe" in evolution. Denying evolution is tantamount to denying, for example, what we know about gravity. A Gallup Poll published last year (click here for the story) reveals an embarrassing low percentage of US citizens who accept the scientific claims associated with evolution. A 2006 article in Science showed public acceptance of evolution in the US to be next to last among the 34 countries surveyed (click here for the country chart). The richest country in human history with the ability to provide public education to its citizens should be chagrined by its lack of scientific literacy, especially given that On the Origin of Species was published almost 154 years ago.
The good news is that days like today have meaning. We celebrate the ideas that revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. With the ever-increasing advance of technology and the spread of information, we should be hopeful that scientific literacy will improve. Darwin Day helps in this effort. People like Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey help, too. A physicist, Holt led the effort to have today recognized as Darwin Day in the US. Kudos to Dr Holt!
If you know very little about Darwin's ideas, there are many easy-to-read books out there. I love The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins (click here to get it). Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish (click here to get it) is also a wonderful read with a concluding chapter that you'll want to read twice (at least!). Never feel ashamed if you are ignorant about something. Knowing everything would mean never being able to experience the thrill of learning.
Have a great Darwin Day!
28 January 2013
Lance Armstrong, Baseball HOF, and Reality
I wrote a post last August (click here for that post) on Lance Armstrong and reality. I have waited several days after Armstrong's admission to Oprah Winfrey that he cheated in his Tour de France competitions (other competitions, too) because I didn't want to post something knee-jerk. Because of my Tour de France research and my book's chapter on Tour de France cycling with emphasis on Lance Armstrong, many people have contacted me wanting to know my thoughts on Armstrong. I'll offer a few here.
One of the great appeals that science has for me is that I am not forced to "believe" anything. Scientists acquire data and evidence through experimentation in the natural world, build models of the natural world from that data and evidence, and then test the models with better experiments. We scientists do not fear being wrong, and in fact sometimes relish being wrong because of the opportunity afforded to learn something new about how the universe works. The collective efforts of scientists over the past few centuries have given us our current understanding of the world. The various pieces of our knowledge come with various levels of likelihood. All good scientific theories must be falsifiable, and experiments are done every day with the goal of falsifying current understanding of the natural world. If a repeatable experiment comes along and shatters our current understanding of the world, then we evolve our knowledge base and move on with new information. We try to avoid confirmation bias and let our investigations into natural provide us with "truth." Though our knowledge of the universe is far from complete, we use science as the tool to remove our ignorance.
An alternate approach to gaining knowledge is "faith," which Webster defines as firm or unquestioning belief in something for which there is no proof. I could simply have faith in a proposition, but what happens when scientific "proof" comes along to shatter my faith? Do I accept a scientific result or adhere to a faith in something despite evidence to the contrary? As a thinking scientist, I cannot do the latter. And now we come to Lance Armstrong, and then to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
For 13 years, Lance Armstrong vehemently denied cheating while competing in cycling races. He was backed up by having no failed drug tests. Many, many people had faith in Armstrong because there was no proof to the contrary. Many, many other people believed that Armstrong cheated, despite the lack of proof. People were thus taking sides on competing claims, yet there was no evidence to bolster either side. Armstrong and those who supported him were in the impossible position of having to prove a negative. How does one prove that one did not cheat even when drug tests came back negative? Those on Armstrong's side took him at his word and those on the other side believed he could not possibly be good enough to win seven Tours in a row without performance enhancing drugs.
Armstrong has now admitted to cheating during all seven Tour wins, using EPO, blood doping via blood transfusion, HGH, testosterone, and cortisone. He claimed that he could not win seven Tours in a row without cheating. He also claimed that he could not win "in that generation," referring of course to the belief that many cycling competitors were cheating. Armstrong further claimed that he did not cheat during his comeback in 2009 and 2010 in which he finished 3rd and 23rd, respectively, in the Tour de France. That claim is contradicted by a drug test that was supposed to have a "one in a million" false positive. New testing science and, especially, biological passports have contributed greatly to cleaning up cycling.
Armstrong's comments beg the question: what percentage of cyclists were cheating while Armstrong was winning the Tour de France each year? If everyone was cheating, was he simply the best of the best? Did his fame and wealth provide him with cheating advantages over his competitors? Armstrong told Oprah Winfrey that he looked up "cheat" in the dictionary and noted the phrase "gain advantage." He didn't, however, feel that he had an advantage because the prevalence of cheating meant that he competed on a level playing field.
So, without data and evidence, do you withhold an opinion or decide to have faith in a belief? Armstrong told Winfrey, "I'm not the most believable guy in the world right now, I understand." Do we believe Armstrong's claim of widespread cheating or do we think that he is rationalizing his own deceitful actions? Is the truth close to what Armstrong claims? Those who thought Armstrong a liar for 13 years could easily now believe his claim of widespread cheating.
Science helped out Armstrong. Urine that did not test positive in 1999, Armstrong's first Tour de France win, is now positive with better science. It is easy to lie when one does not have to compete against data and evidence. Cheaters who get caught almost always "come clean" because they are staring at data and evidence produced via good science. It is a testimony to our value system that we hold in such high esteem the results of science done well.
Lance Armstrong had his Tour de France wins vacated. What has not been vacated are any of Barry Bonds' home runs or Roger Clemens' strikeouts. The statistics and accomplishments for Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire are all still on the books. No MVP's, Cy Young's, World Series titles, or other accolades have been wiped from the official baseball records. Yet the guy with the most home runs in a season and in a career (Bonds), the guy with the most Cy Young's (Clemens), the only guy to hit 60 home runs in three seasons (Sosa), the greatest hitting catcher (Piazza), and all the rest did not receive calls from the Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this month.
Do admissions of cheating from the likes of Lance Armstrong mean that the likelihood that others cheated is greater? Should we form such opinions without data and evidence? Some claim that Barry Bonds' body changed so much that he had to cheat. Several of the great baseball players shut out of the Hall of Fame adamantly denied cheating during their careers. Do we believe them in spite of the impossibility of proving a negative? If baseball continues to maintain the records and statistics of all great players of the past couple of decades, even those who admitted cheating (McGwire) or were caught at least once (Palmeiro), should the Hall of Fame admit the best of the best "in that generation" of cheating?
Frankly, I think the Baseball Hall of Fame looked ridiculous not voting anyone in. I refrain from claiming to know more than I know. I won't claim that a given player never cheated despite never testing positive. I couldn't claim that Armstrong was clean or not clean while he was winning the Tour every year because I simply didn't have the data and evidence to support a claim. Many people had "gut reactions," but there is a reason Carl Sagan said that he didn't think with his gut. I've no idea if players on the baseball HOF ballet cheated or not, but as long as baseball maintains the statistics and records, how can the players be denied entry? The governing body of cycling vacated Armstrong's wins, thus changing how cycling's history will record Armstrong's feats. Baseball has done no such thing. What happens if someone already in the HOF admits to using performance-enhancing drugs? Does that person get voted out? That would be unprecedented. Would such an admission open the gates to players suspected of cheating? Who knows?
I have offered many questions above, but few answers. Though not always successful, I try to avoid believing claims that are not supported by data and evidence. I am sincerely disappointed that Lance Armstrong cheated. It was researching his feats in France that got my career in sports physics started. His admissions do not alter my research in any way, but it stings me that what I witnessed for seven straight years is now an altered reality. If the Armstrong mess has taught us anything, it is that skepticism is much more virtuous than faith.
Regarding the ethics of Armstrong's decision to cheat, allow me to offer a thought experiment. Suppose you could experience the thrill of winning a grueling race like the Tour de France seven consecutive times. You could enjoy all the wonderful French vistas for three weeks each summer, have thousands of people cheer you on, and then stand at the race's end with a great trophy and some prize money. You could be rich and famous. Suppose further that someone tells you a few years after you last raced in the Tour de France that your wins didn't count. Your memories are still intact and you still have plenty of money so that you and your family are financially secure for many years to come. Would you take all that? I suspect part of one's brain would immediately say "No!" while another part would weigh financial security and great memories against a publicly soiled name.
I could offer the same thought experiment with baseball. Barry Bonds earned more than $188 million from baseball salaries. He earned plenty of money off the field, too. Roger Clemens made over $150 million from baseball salaries and more in endorsements. Both players have trophy cases bulging with shiny metal and memories of achieving great things on a baseball diamond. If either or both cheated, would you like to have a life like that? Would it matter to you that your name was dragged through the mud if your family was financially set for several generations? You could have anything you want and travel the world. Would the ends justify the means? I'd like to think I would take the high road and turn all the fame and money down to avoid cheating. What would you do?
The thought experiment I just described is, of course, completely unrealistic, but any hesitation in thinking about whether or not you would accept the imagined offer should make you think very carefully about any moral judgments you make on Armstrong and the baseball greats of the past two decades. Think, too, about the exponential growth in technology and what that means for how the next generation of athletes approaches sports. Medical advances will help athletes recover from injuries that once might have ended careers. Nutritional advances will provide vitamins and supplements that blur the line between acceptable and cheating, a line that is not all that clear today. If hyper-competitive athletes in previous generations had access to today's technology, do you think they would have turned away from any edge they could have received from the technology? Don't kid yourself. I can't prove anything about what past athletes would or would not do, but I can sure be skeptical.
One of the great appeals that science has for me is that I am not forced to "believe" anything. Scientists acquire data and evidence through experimentation in the natural world, build models of the natural world from that data and evidence, and then test the models with better experiments. We scientists do not fear being wrong, and in fact sometimes relish being wrong because of the opportunity afforded to learn something new about how the universe works. The collective efforts of scientists over the past few centuries have given us our current understanding of the world. The various pieces of our knowledge come with various levels of likelihood. All good scientific theories must be falsifiable, and experiments are done every day with the goal of falsifying current understanding of the natural world. If a repeatable experiment comes along and shatters our current understanding of the world, then we evolve our knowledge base and move on with new information. We try to avoid confirmation bias and let our investigations into natural provide us with "truth." Though our knowledge of the universe is far from complete, we use science as the tool to remove our ignorance.
An alternate approach to gaining knowledge is "faith," which Webster defines as firm or unquestioning belief in something for which there is no proof. I could simply have faith in a proposition, but what happens when scientific "proof" comes along to shatter my faith? Do I accept a scientific result or adhere to a faith in something despite evidence to the contrary? As a thinking scientist, I cannot do the latter. And now we come to Lance Armstrong, and then to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
For 13 years, Lance Armstrong vehemently denied cheating while competing in cycling races. He was backed up by having no failed drug tests. Many, many people had faith in Armstrong because there was no proof to the contrary. Many, many other people believed that Armstrong cheated, despite the lack of proof. People were thus taking sides on competing claims, yet there was no evidence to bolster either side. Armstrong and those who supported him were in the impossible position of having to prove a negative. How does one prove that one did not cheat even when drug tests came back negative? Those on Armstrong's side took him at his word and those on the other side believed he could not possibly be good enough to win seven Tours in a row without performance enhancing drugs.
Armstrong has now admitted to cheating during all seven Tour wins, using EPO, blood doping via blood transfusion, HGH, testosterone, and cortisone. He claimed that he could not win seven Tours in a row without cheating. He also claimed that he could not win "in that generation," referring of course to the belief that many cycling competitors were cheating. Armstrong further claimed that he did not cheat during his comeback in 2009 and 2010 in which he finished 3rd and 23rd, respectively, in the Tour de France. That claim is contradicted by a drug test that was supposed to have a "one in a million" false positive. New testing science and, especially, biological passports have contributed greatly to cleaning up cycling.
Armstrong's comments beg the question: what percentage of cyclists were cheating while Armstrong was winning the Tour de France each year? If everyone was cheating, was he simply the best of the best? Did his fame and wealth provide him with cheating advantages over his competitors? Armstrong told Oprah Winfrey that he looked up "cheat" in the dictionary and noted the phrase "gain advantage." He didn't, however, feel that he had an advantage because the prevalence of cheating meant that he competed on a level playing field.
So, without data and evidence, do you withhold an opinion or decide to have faith in a belief? Armstrong told Winfrey, "I'm not the most believable guy in the world right now, I understand." Do we believe Armstrong's claim of widespread cheating or do we think that he is rationalizing his own deceitful actions? Is the truth close to what Armstrong claims? Those who thought Armstrong a liar for 13 years could easily now believe his claim of widespread cheating.
Science helped out Armstrong. Urine that did not test positive in 1999, Armstrong's first Tour de France win, is now positive with better science. It is easy to lie when one does not have to compete against data and evidence. Cheaters who get caught almost always "come clean" because they are staring at data and evidence produced via good science. It is a testimony to our value system that we hold in such high esteem the results of science done well.
Lance Armstrong had his Tour de France wins vacated. What has not been vacated are any of Barry Bonds' home runs or Roger Clemens' strikeouts. The statistics and accomplishments for Mike Piazza, Jeff Bagwell, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire are all still on the books. No MVP's, Cy Young's, World Series titles, or other accolades have been wiped from the official baseball records. Yet the guy with the most home runs in a season and in a career (Bonds), the guy with the most Cy Young's (Clemens), the only guy to hit 60 home runs in three seasons (Sosa), the greatest hitting catcher (Piazza), and all the rest did not receive calls from the Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this month.
Do admissions of cheating from the likes of Lance Armstrong mean that the likelihood that others cheated is greater? Should we form such opinions without data and evidence? Some claim that Barry Bonds' body changed so much that he had to cheat. Several of the great baseball players shut out of the Hall of Fame adamantly denied cheating during their careers. Do we believe them in spite of the impossibility of proving a negative? If baseball continues to maintain the records and statistics of all great players of the past couple of decades, even those who admitted cheating (McGwire) or were caught at least once (Palmeiro), should the Hall of Fame admit the best of the best "in that generation" of cheating?
Frankly, I think the Baseball Hall of Fame looked ridiculous not voting anyone in. I refrain from claiming to know more than I know. I won't claim that a given player never cheated despite never testing positive. I couldn't claim that Armstrong was clean or not clean while he was winning the Tour every year because I simply didn't have the data and evidence to support a claim. Many people had "gut reactions," but there is a reason Carl Sagan said that he didn't think with his gut. I've no idea if players on the baseball HOF ballet cheated or not, but as long as baseball maintains the statistics and records, how can the players be denied entry? The governing body of cycling vacated Armstrong's wins, thus changing how cycling's history will record Armstrong's feats. Baseball has done no such thing. What happens if someone already in the HOF admits to using performance-enhancing drugs? Does that person get voted out? That would be unprecedented. Would such an admission open the gates to players suspected of cheating? Who knows?
I have offered many questions above, but few answers. Though not always successful, I try to avoid believing claims that are not supported by data and evidence. I am sincerely disappointed that Lance Armstrong cheated. It was researching his feats in France that got my career in sports physics started. His admissions do not alter my research in any way, but it stings me that what I witnessed for seven straight years is now an altered reality. If the Armstrong mess has taught us anything, it is that skepticism is much more virtuous than faith.
Regarding the ethics of Armstrong's decision to cheat, allow me to offer a thought experiment. Suppose you could experience the thrill of winning a grueling race like the Tour de France seven consecutive times. You could enjoy all the wonderful French vistas for three weeks each summer, have thousands of people cheer you on, and then stand at the race's end with a great trophy and some prize money. You could be rich and famous. Suppose further that someone tells you a few years after you last raced in the Tour de France that your wins didn't count. Your memories are still intact and you still have plenty of money so that you and your family are financially secure for many years to come. Would you take all that? I suspect part of one's brain would immediately say "No!" while another part would weigh financial security and great memories against a publicly soiled name.
I could offer the same thought experiment with baseball. Barry Bonds earned more than $188 million from baseball salaries. He earned plenty of money off the field, too. Roger Clemens made over $150 million from baseball salaries and more in endorsements. Both players have trophy cases bulging with shiny metal and memories of achieving great things on a baseball diamond. If either or both cheated, would you like to have a life like that? Would it matter to you that your name was dragged through the mud if your family was financially set for several generations? You could have anything you want and travel the world. Would the ends justify the means? I'd like to think I would take the high road and turn all the fame and money down to avoid cheating. What would you do?
The thought experiment I just described is, of course, completely unrealistic, but any hesitation in thinking about whether or not you would accept the imagined offer should make you think very carefully about any moral judgments you make on Armstrong and the baseball greats of the past two decades. Think, too, about the exponential growth in technology and what that means for how the next generation of athletes approaches sports. Medical advances will help athletes recover from injuries that once might have ended careers. Nutritional advances will provide vitamins and supplements that blur the line between acceptable and cheating, a line that is not all that clear today. If hyper-competitive athletes in previous generations had access to today's technology, do you think they would have turned away from any edge they could have received from the technology? Don't kid yourself. I can't prove anything about what past athletes would or would not do, but I can sure be skeptical.
19 January 2013
The Great Taiho Koki
I learned this morning of the passing of the legendary Taiho Koki (click here for a story in The Japan Times). For those not familiar with the sport of sumo, Taiho was as famous and dominant as anyone whoever donned the kesho-mawashi. Think of a sports name that any non-sports fan knows. In the US, names like Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jordan (Lance Armstrong, too, but more on him in a later post) are names known to even those who despise sport. Names like Pele, Diego Maradona, David Beckham, and Lionel Messi are surely omnipresent in the minds of people where soccer rules the land. In Japan, the name people know is Taiho.
Taiho and sumo are the topics of Chapter 9 of my book. More than other part of my book, the sumo chapter was the most fun to research and write. My eyes were opened to a phenomenal talent of whom I had never heard. Taiho was born 29 May 1940 during a period of great international conflict. He was the face and name of post-WWII sumo. A sumo tyro in 1956 at an age when those of us in the US are more concerned about getting a driver's license and what's playing at the local movie theater, Taiho took just five years to rise to the level of yokozuna, the 48th ever so promoted to the highest designation of "great champion." Not until 1974 would someone younger be able to called himself yokozuna.
The main sumo tournament is called a honbasho, which is held every other month. Between the Tokyo honbasho in January 1960 and the Tokyo honbasho in May 1971, there were a total of 69 honbasho. Taiho won 32 of them, more than 46%. He had a perfect 15-0 match record in eight of those 32 wins. Nobody before or since dominated sumo like that.
When I was thinking about my penultimate book chapter, I knew I wanted to write about a sport that was not only unfamiliar to me but one that would easily fit a couple of physics topics I still had on the table, namely energy transfers in the body and linear momentum. Sumo was a natural fit. Sumo competitors are referred to as rikishi and one staple of their diet is chanko-nabe, which is a high-carb and high-protein stew. I had a great deal of fun following energy transfers from the Big Bang all the way to the yummy chanko-nabe and then through the body of a rikishi. Along the way, I grew a deeper respect for the sport of sumo and an admiration for its most famous name.
The sports world never stops. American football has a couple of big playoff games on Sunday. Baseball fans in the US will remember the life of great Oriole manager Earl Weaver, who also died today, but they'll also be thinking about spring training starting in less than a month. Cycling fans will continue to discuss Lance Armstrong following his recent interview with Oprah Winfrey. Premier League fans will continue to wonder if a club outside Manchester can make it to the top two in the table. And so on and so on. If you know nothing about sumo, as I did before I researched it for a book chapter, read something about the great Taiho Koki. Supreme athletic dominance is rare and fascinating for sports fans. You will not be disappointed if you spend a few minutes today reading about a legend who is no longer with us.
Taiho and sumo are the topics of Chapter 9 of my book. More than other part of my book, the sumo chapter was the most fun to research and write. My eyes were opened to a phenomenal talent of whom I had never heard. Taiho was born 29 May 1940 during a period of great international conflict. He was the face and name of post-WWII sumo. A sumo tyro in 1956 at an age when those of us in the US are more concerned about getting a driver's license and what's playing at the local movie theater, Taiho took just five years to rise to the level of yokozuna, the 48th ever so promoted to the highest designation of "great champion." Not until 1974 would someone younger be able to called himself yokozuna.
The main sumo tournament is called a honbasho, which is held every other month. Between the Tokyo honbasho in January 1960 and the Tokyo honbasho in May 1971, there were a total of 69 honbasho. Taiho won 32 of them, more than 46%. He had a perfect 15-0 match record in eight of those 32 wins. Nobody before or since dominated sumo like that.
When I was thinking about my penultimate book chapter, I knew I wanted to write about a sport that was not only unfamiliar to me but one that would easily fit a couple of physics topics I still had on the table, namely energy transfers in the body and linear momentum. Sumo was a natural fit. Sumo competitors are referred to as rikishi and one staple of their diet is chanko-nabe, which is a high-carb and high-protein stew. I had a great deal of fun following energy transfers from the Big Bang all the way to the yummy chanko-nabe and then through the body of a rikishi. Along the way, I grew a deeper respect for the sport of sumo and an admiration for its most famous name.
The sports world never stops. American football has a couple of big playoff games on Sunday. Baseball fans in the US will remember the life of great Oriole manager Earl Weaver, who also died today, but they'll also be thinking about spring training starting in less than a month. Cycling fans will continue to discuss Lance Armstrong following his recent interview with Oprah Winfrey. Premier League fans will continue to wonder if a club outside Manchester can make it to the top two in the table. And so on and so on. If you know nothing about sumo, as I did before I researched it for a book chapter, read something about the great Taiho Koki. Supreme athletic dominance is rare and fascinating for sports fans. You will not be disappointed if you spend a few minutes today reading about a legend who is no longer with us.
31 December 2012
Vandy Wins #9!
My alma mater, Vanderbilt University, just won the Music City Bowl, 38-24 over North Carolina State University (click here for the box score). The Music City Bowl is not one of college football's big bowls, but like all the other small bowl games, it is important to the alumni and fans of the schools involved.
What makes this bowl so special for Vandy alumni like me is that the win is the 9th on the season. Nine wins may make for a less-than-stellar season for a powerhouse school like the University of Alabama, but Vandy has not won nine games since 1915. Dan McGugin's point-a-minute squad went 9-1 that year, including shutouts in the first seven games (click here for more information on that crazy team). When Vanderbilt beat Sewanee 27-3 on Saturday, 20 November 1915, did anyone think that 35,471 days would pass before another Vanderbilt team won a 9th game?
It took just over 97 years, but Vandy finally got another nine-win season. Congratulations to Coach James Franklin and my fellow Commodores!
What makes this bowl so special for Vandy alumni like me is that the win is the 9th on the season. Nine wins may make for a less-than-stellar season for a powerhouse school like the University of Alabama, but Vandy has not won nine games since 1915. Dan McGugin's point-a-minute squad went 9-1 that year, including shutouts in the first seven games (click here for more information on that crazy team). When Vanderbilt beat Sewanee 27-3 on Saturday, 20 November 1915, did anyone think that 35,471 days would pass before another Vanderbilt team won a 9th game?
It took just over 97 years, but Vandy finally got another nine-win season. Congratulations to Coach James Franklin and my fellow Commodores!
30 December 2012
Physics of Tebow Getting Bigger
Kristian Dyer quotes me in his article "Bigger Tebow not a good fit for Jets" in Metro -- New York on 30 December 2012. Click here for the article.
17 December 2012
Thoughts on Connecticut
Like so many people, I was horror-struck upon learning of the massacre that took place in a Connecticut elementary school this past Friday. Any sadness I've experienced and tears I've shed obviously pale in comparison to what those involved have experienced and shed. As the parent of a third grader and a first grader, I see the names and faces of the slain children and try as hard as I can to not see my own children's faces on such a terrible list. I could never empathize with those who had lost children before having children of my own. Not until I could see my own heart and life's focus walking around in my daughters could I even glimpse what those in Connecticut must be going through.
A very busy semester came to a close last Friday and I was planning to write a blog post today dealing with some topic in sports science. What happened in Connecticut is too fresh in my mind to want to write about anything else. Strangely enough I had a small sports thought not long after learning of the recent tragedy. I remembered reading last summer that a special dispensation had to be bestowed for those participating in gun events at the London Summer Olympics. I then recalled the 1996 Dunblane massacre that moved the UK to enact its firearms act in 1997 (amendment #2). Living in the UK for nearly a year gave me a different feeling from living in the US. When my family visited new towns and cities, we never felt that worried about walking around in the evening because we knew people didn't have guns. Sure, there was a rare article now and then about someone killing a person with a gun. Sure, there were issues with youths and knives. But it just felt different knowing that guns weren't everywhere. I had the same feeling when my wife and I spent a fortnight in Japan.
I mention environments in countries outside my own because on the very same day I learned of the massacre in Connecticut, I read a story (click here) about multiple stabbings in a Chinese primary school. In that awful event, a man stabbed 22 children, which struck me as so eerily similar to the fact that the number of children killed in Connecticut was 20. The difference, of course, is that all 22 children stabbed in China are still alive. They will surely have physical and emotional scars that will haunt them their entire lives. They were surely traumatized beyond imagination. But, they are all still alive.
As a scientist, I'm certainly not going to pretend that two isolated events, data points, if you will, suggest sweeping generalizations about different cultures, different laws, different individuals who commit crimes, and so forth. But, think for a moment about how the ease of access to weaponry that can take a couple dozen lives in a few minutes compares to living in a place where deranged individuals do not have easy access to semi-automatic weaponry.
My views on gun control changed about a decade ago, and probably became crystallized in mind after my first daughter took her first breath. My wife and I lost our first daughter's twin sister not long before the birth, so I already had a taste of losing what a parent can't fathom losing. A free society like we enjoy in the US has its share of trade offs, which might be described in terms of risk and reward. We could end the yearly tens of thousands of auto-related deaths by reducing the speed limit to, say, 20 mph (realistically, cars would have to be machine-limited to 20 mph). But, our economy would grind to a halt. Food and medicine would not be transported quickly enough; people's livelihoods and quality of living would suffer. We accept higher-risk roads for the rapidity of transport and high quality of living.
What is the trade off for having as many guns as citizens? I love to hunt, and I enjoy firing my hunting rifle at targets. At one point early in my life, I was a hypocrite who ate meat but scolded hunters. The enjoyment I get from hunting and firing a rifle is simply that, enjoyment. What about those who collect firearms? Is the benefit more than simply enjoyment? Some people want protection from their guns, but from whom do they imagine their guns protecting them? Perhaps a single woman afraid of large male attackers is one option, but I suspect most fear other people with guns. If there were no guns in the US, what would we lose? Collecting enjoyment? The fun at a shooting range? Hunting fun? Our economy wouldn't grind to a halt if guns disappeared. We would trade the emotion of enjoyment for the addition of human beings that would have been slain by guns. Does risk/reward analysis ever allow the former to outweigh the latter?
I am not naive enough to think that a gun-obsessed country like the US could ever get rid of guns. But, I'll support any effort to scale back what is legal. It staggers my mind to think of the types of weapons I could possess. There are those who like bumper-sticker politics and tropes like "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!" Play that to its most idiotic extreme. Suppose that everyone had a button on his or her kitchen counter that could launch a missile. Would we see bumper stickers with "Missiles don't kill people, people kill people!"? Silly extrapolation, right? Is it not just a matter of degree? We don't let people walk around with M60 machine guns because of the enormous number of lives that could be taken by a lunatic. We don't let people have access to missiles because the number of possible dead would be unthinkable. But, we let people have access to semi-automatic weapons. Why?
Some say that talking about gun control on the heels of an awful tragedy is to try for political gain. I ask, when is it a better time to talk about gun control than after 26 people are shot dead in an elementary school with semi-automatic weapons? Find me a day on the calendar when a person is not shot dead in the US. It wasn't Valentine's Day in 2003 when a friend of mine from graduate school was shot dead for having the temerity to talk to the wife of a disturbed person. Anybody reading this could come up with a day when someone they knew or a friend of a friend was affected by gun violence. The thought that won't leave my mind right now is wondering what would have happened if the lunatic in Connecticut only had access to a knife. Reality can never be played out in a parallel universe with a tweak of the parameters, so we'll never know.
I open my book with Roy Campanella's famous quote, "You got to be a man to play baseball for a living, but you got to have a lot of little boy in you, too." I know from experience how wonderful it is to take childhood joy into my adult career. To the 20 in Connecticut who were denied that chance, and to the six who devoted their lives to bring out the joy of learning, I hope your deaths will help change the world.
A very busy semester came to a close last Friday and I was planning to write a blog post today dealing with some topic in sports science. What happened in Connecticut is too fresh in my mind to want to write about anything else. Strangely enough I had a small sports thought not long after learning of the recent tragedy. I remembered reading last summer that a special dispensation had to be bestowed for those participating in gun events at the London Summer Olympics. I then recalled the 1996 Dunblane massacre that moved the UK to enact its firearms act in 1997 (amendment #2). Living in the UK for nearly a year gave me a different feeling from living in the US. When my family visited new towns and cities, we never felt that worried about walking around in the evening because we knew people didn't have guns. Sure, there was a rare article now and then about someone killing a person with a gun. Sure, there were issues with youths and knives. But it just felt different knowing that guns weren't everywhere. I had the same feeling when my wife and I spent a fortnight in Japan.
I mention environments in countries outside my own because on the very same day I learned of the massacre in Connecticut, I read a story (click here) about multiple stabbings in a Chinese primary school. In that awful event, a man stabbed 22 children, which struck me as so eerily similar to the fact that the number of children killed in Connecticut was 20. The difference, of course, is that all 22 children stabbed in China are still alive. They will surely have physical and emotional scars that will haunt them their entire lives. They were surely traumatized beyond imagination. But, they are all still alive.
As a scientist, I'm certainly not going to pretend that two isolated events, data points, if you will, suggest sweeping generalizations about different cultures, different laws, different individuals who commit crimes, and so forth. But, think for a moment about how the ease of access to weaponry that can take a couple dozen lives in a few minutes compares to living in a place where deranged individuals do not have easy access to semi-automatic weaponry.
My views on gun control changed about a decade ago, and probably became crystallized in mind after my first daughter took her first breath. My wife and I lost our first daughter's twin sister not long before the birth, so I already had a taste of losing what a parent can't fathom losing. A free society like we enjoy in the US has its share of trade offs, which might be described in terms of risk and reward. We could end the yearly tens of thousands of auto-related deaths by reducing the speed limit to, say, 20 mph (realistically, cars would have to be machine-limited to 20 mph). But, our economy would grind to a halt. Food and medicine would not be transported quickly enough; people's livelihoods and quality of living would suffer. We accept higher-risk roads for the rapidity of transport and high quality of living.
What is the trade off for having as many guns as citizens? I love to hunt, and I enjoy firing my hunting rifle at targets. At one point early in my life, I was a hypocrite who ate meat but scolded hunters. The enjoyment I get from hunting and firing a rifle is simply that, enjoyment. What about those who collect firearms? Is the benefit more than simply enjoyment? Some people want protection from their guns, but from whom do they imagine their guns protecting them? Perhaps a single woman afraid of large male attackers is one option, but I suspect most fear other people with guns. If there were no guns in the US, what would we lose? Collecting enjoyment? The fun at a shooting range? Hunting fun? Our economy wouldn't grind to a halt if guns disappeared. We would trade the emotion of enjoyment for the addition of human beings that would have been slain by guns. Does risk/reward analysis ever allow the former to outweigh the latter?
I am not naive enough to think that a gun-obsessed country like the US could ever get rid of guns. But, I'll support any effort to scale back what is legal. It staggers my mind to think of the types of weapons I could possess. There are those who like bumper-sticker politics and tropes like "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!" Play that to its most idiotic extreme. Suppose that everyone had a button on his or her kitchen counter that could launch a missile. Would we see bumper stickers with "Missiles don't kill people, people kill people!"? Silly extrapolation, right? Is it not just a matter of degree? We don't let people walk around with M60 machine guns because of the enormous number of lives that could be taken by a lunatic. We don't let people have access to missiles because the number of possible dead would be unthinkable. But, we let people have access to semi-automatic weapons. Why?
Some say that talking about gun control on the heels of an awful tragedy is to try for political gain. I ask, when is it a better time to talk about gun control than after 26 people are shot dead in an elementary school with semi-automatic weapons? Find me a day on the calendar when a person is not shot dead in the US. It wasn't Valentine's Day in 2003 when a friend of mine from graduate school was shot dead for having the temerity to talk to the wife of a disturbed person. Anybody reading this could come up with a day when someone they knew or a friend of a friend was affected by gun violence. The thought that won't leave my mind right now is wondering what would have happened if the lunatic in Connecticut only had access to a knife. Reality can never be played out in a parallel universe with a tweak of the parameters, so we'll never know.
I open my book with Roy Campanella's famous quote, "You got to be a man to play baseball for a living, but you got to have a lot of little boy in you, too." I know from experience how wonderful it is to take childhood joy into my adult career. To the 20 in Connecticut who were denied that chance, and to the six who devoted their lives to bring out the joy of learning, I hope your deaths will help change the world.
19 November 2012
New blog look!
Thanks to some great work from Tracy Chase and John McCormick of Lynchburg College, I now have a new look to my blog. I have not posted much in the past couple of months as John got some photos taken and Tracy worked on a new template. My blog now looks like it's written by someone working in the field of sports physics instead of gardening!
I hope to get back to more frequent blog writing soon. A busy academic semester and a few annoying back issues have slowed my writing more than waiting for a new template to be ready. It's impossible for me to watch any sporting event without seeing a great deal of wonderful physics on display. More posts will be coming very soon!
I hope to get back to more frequent blog writing soon. A busy academic semester and a few annoying back issues have slowed my writing more than waiting for a new template to be ready. It's impossible for me to watch any sporting event without seeing a great deal of wonderful physics on display. More posts will be coming very soon!
22 October 2012
Sad Cycling Day
The inevitable came to fruition today as Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. I wrote about Armstrong and reality at the end of August (click here for that post). In that post, I gave a list of the runners up for the seven races Armstrong won. I suppose we have a new reality now as men who thought they finished behind Armstrong will learn that they have new cycling glory as their names sit atop a scratched-out Lance Armstrong, even if those men are not the official winners.
It's a sad day for cycling. Whether or not you were a fan of Armstrong, and he could certainly be a polarizing figure, the sport of cycling now has a huge hole in the history of its greatest race. It's sad that the sport had such a culture of cheating that young cycling professionals felt that the only hope for a level playing field was to acquiesce to that culture. As a 42-year-old physicist comfortable in my career, I may be tempted to admonish a young cyclist for not taking a moral stand, but that young cyclist most likely didn't have too many career options. It's easy to say that cheating is wrong no matter what, but life is immensely more complicated than such easy moral absolutes.
If Armstrong cheated, and the copious evidence seems overwhelming that he did, he absolutely deserves what is happening to him. It's sad, though, for all the people who were so taken by his story of beating cancer and reaching the summit of the cycling world. So much of history is riddled with tragedy that seeking heroes might not be best for us. I feel the personal sting of having a book chapter that was dedicated to Armstrong's amazing Tour de France feats suddenly feel like fiction instead of sports science.
Dedicating my life to science helps me accept the direction to which evidence points. Science seeks to get ever closer to the truth through investigations in the natural world. Sometimes, the evidence takes us to places we never thought we'd go. Today, the evidence took the cycling world to a sad place.
It's a sad day for cycling. Whether or not you were a fan of Armstrong, and he could certainly be a polarizing figure, the sport of cycling now has a huge hole in the history of its greatest race. It's sad that the sport had such a culture of cheating that young cycling professionals felt that the only hope for a level playing field was to acquiesce to that culture. As a 42-year-old physicist comfortable in my career, I may be tempted to admonish a young cyclist for not taking a moral stand, but that young cyclist most likely didn't have too many career options. It's easy to say that cheating is wrong no matter what, but life is immensely more complicated than such easy moral absolutes.
If Armstrong cheated, and the copious evidence seems overwhelming that he did, he absolutely deserves what is happening to him. It's sad, though, for all the people who were so taken by his story of beating cancer and reaching the summit of the cycling world. So much of history is riddled with tragedy that seeking heroes might not be best for us. I feel the personal sting of having a book chapter that was dedicated to Armstrong's amazing Tour de France feats suddenly feel like fiction instead of sports science.
Dedicating my life to science helps me accept the direction to which evidence points. Science seeks to get ever closer to the truth through investigations in the natural world. Sometimes, the evidence takes us to places we never thought we'd go. Today, the evidence took the cycling world to a sad place.
24 September 2012
London Olympics Talk
A few people have asked me about the relatively long length of time since my last blog post, which I wrote on the final day of August. I am still alive (yeah!), but a couple obstacles have been in my writing path. The Lynchburg College academic year began at the the end of August and I've been having fun teaching calculus-based introductory physics, electromagnetism, and statistical thermodynamics. We have hefty teaching loads at my college! On the nonprofessional front, I've got a pesky herniated disc that needs attention. To that end, I'm having back surgery this Friday at the University of Virginia medical center. I've had two such surgeries in the past; they are more annoying than anything else. I'm lucky enough to not have a physically demanding job that would keep me away from work longer than about a week.
On a happier note, I plan to give a talk on a bunch of physics goodies from this past summer's London Olympics. My talk is part of Lynchburg College's Science Gang series and will begin at 4:30 pm this Thursday (27 September) in Hopwood Auditorium. Click here to see where on my campus that building is located. The talk is open to the public, so if you are in or around Lynchburg, Virginia this Thursday afternoon, drop by and enjoy some Olympics physics. Get to the auditorium by 4:00 pm and you'll get some pizza, snacks, and drinks.
On a happier note, I plan to give a talk on a bunch of physics goodies from this past summer's London Olympics. My talk is part of Lynchburg College's Science Gang series and will begin at 4:30 pm this Thursday (27 September) in Hopwood Auditorium. Click here to see where on my campus that building is located. The talk is open to the public, so if you are in or around Lynchburg, Virginia this Thursday afternoon, drop by and enjoy some Olympics physics. Get to the auditorium by 4:00 pm and you'll get some pizza, snacks, and drinks.
31 August 2012
Interference ... or not?
My Vanderbilt Commodores helped open the college football season on Thursday night by hosting the #9-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks. I always root for my alma maters (Vanderbilt and Indiana), but as the football season moves along, it usually becomes clear that the chances of seeing my schools win will improve greatly once basketball season arrives. Opening this season at home with a top-ten SEC school did not bode well for my desire to see Vandy get off to a good start.
We lost to South Carolina, 17-13, after leading early in the 4th quarter. Vandy might have looked better than I thought we'd look, and South Carolina might not have looked like a top-ten team. The two schools appeared more evenly matched than I thought they'd be before the start of the game.
With just under two minutes left in the game and facing a 4th and 7 from our own 38-yard line, Vandy quarterback Jordan Rogers threw a long pass toward the right sideline for Jordan Matthews. South Carolina safety D. J. Swearinger was defending Matthews. The pass made it to about the South Carolina 35-yard line. Check out the two images below (click on each for a larger view).
We lost to South Carolina, 17-13, after leading early in the 4th quarter. Vandy might have looked better than I thought we'd look, and South Carolina might not have looked like a top-ten team. The two schools appeared more evenly matched than I thought they'd be before the start of the game.
With just under two minutes left in the game and facing a 4th and 7 from our own 38-yard line, Vandy quarterback Jordan Rogers threw a long pass toward the right sideline for Jordan Matthews. South Carolina safety D. J. Swearinger was defending Matthews. The pass made it to about the South Carolina 35-yard line. Check out the two images below (click on each for a larger view).
The above images show Matthews preparing to catch the ball just before it reached him. Now there is an interesting rule in 2011 and 2012 NCAA Football Rules and Interpretations, specifically Section 3, Article 8, part c on page FR-74, which says, "Defensive pass interference is contact beyond the neutral zone by a Team B player whose intent to impede an eligible opponent is obvious and it could prevent the opponent the opportunity of receiving a catchable forward pass." Matthews did not make the catch, ending Vandy's shot at a win. No flag for defensive interference was thrown on the play shown in the above images. I think grabbing a player's arm and yanking it down suggests that Swearinger did "prevent the opponent the opportunity of receiving a catchable forward pass." WE WERE ROBBED!
Okay, so I'm a disgruntled fan who hated to see a ref miss a call that would've given my school a chance to beat a top-ten-ranked school in our season opener. We made plenty of mistakes during the rest of the game and missed calls are just part of the game. There was no guarantee that we would've scored the winning touchdown had a ref made the proper call. But it would've been fun to see if we could have done it.
College football is great because year after year, we make an emotional investment in our alma maters' gridiron exploits. The vicissitudes within each game vex us more than they should -- hey, it's just a game, right?. After a close loss to a top-ten team, this Vandy alumnus does what comes all too naturally -- chalk up another moral victory.
24 August 2012
Reality and Lance Armstrong
Consider the following list:
- Alex Zülle (1999)
- Jan Ullrich (2000)
- Jan Ullrich (2001)
- Joseba Beloki (2002)
- Jan Ullrich (2003)
- Andreas Klöden (2004)
- Ivan Basso (2005)
When compiling a list of Tour de France winners from 1999 to 2005, one needs only one name: Lance Armstrong. The greatest Tour de France cyclist in history did what nobody at the close of the last century thought possible -- win seven consecutive Tour de France races. The list above represents those who finished second behind Armstrong.
Lance Armstrong announced that he would no longer fight the United States Anti-Doping Agency's charges against him. The possibility exists that Armstrong could lose his seven Tour de France titles. If that happens, then what? Will there be a repeat of 2006, the year Floyd Landis stood in front of the Arc de Triomphe donning the yellow jersey as the overall champion, only to be disqualified two months later by the International Cycling Union and see Óscar Pereiro Sío be awarded the win? Will the above list be the new reality?
Of course, the 2006 Tour de France had other doping issues with famous cyclists like Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso getting excluded before the race began. The 2007 Tour de France had its share of doping woes, too. Questions of reality marred those two races.
After the Armstrong news broke, several people asked me, "Do you think he did it?!?" As if I know. I've spent a decade modeling the Tour de France and predicting stage-winning times. Beginning that line of research with Ben Hannas back in 2003, right in the heart of Armstrong's streak, launched my professional career as a sports physicist. Chapter 4 of my book is devoted to Lance Armstrong and Tour de France modeling. Does all of that somehow make me any more knowledgeable as to whether or not Lance Armstrong cheated to win all those Tour de France races? Of course not. Like many, many people, I was enthralled by his story of beating cancer and dominating his sport like no other. But I never met Lance Armstrong, and I've no idea what he does when nobody's watching.
So, what is reality? Surely that's a question pondered by great minds for much of human history. I watched Ben Johnson run the 100-m sprint in the 1988 Summer Olympics in a time of 9.79 s, faster than any human had ever run 100 m. Carl Lewis saw Johnson cross the finish line ahead of him, yet Carl Lewis is listed as the gold-medal winner because of Johnson's famous disqualification three days after the race. The reality for Carl Lewis after that race was that he lost to Johnson. Lewis never got to experience the feeling of having successfully defended his 100-m sprint gold as he crossed the finish line, a feeling Usain Bolt enjoyed last month.
I love college basketball. I watched the championship games in 1992 and 1993 as the Fab Five of Michigan lost both games, yet Michigan vacated those Final-Four appearances -- like they were never there. Imagine what reality shifts would have occurred if Michigan had won one or both of those title games. I'm pretty sure I watched UMass play in the 1996 Final Four, but that school had to vacate its appearance in New Jersey that year. I sat in Assembly Hall in Bloomington and watched the 1997 Final Four Minnesota team beat my beloved Hoosiers in overtime. Oh wait, Minnesota must not have been in Indy that year for the Final Four. Ohio State joined fellow Big-Ten school Michigan State in the 1999 Final Four, but the Buckeyes weren't really there. The Florida sun played with people's eyes that year. Kansas beat Memphis in a thrilling overtime game in the 2008 championship, but, alas, Memphis was really in Tennessee for that game instead of Texas.
Just three days after I turned 37, Alabama beat my Vandy Commodores in football by the score of 24-10. My alma mater finished 5-7 that year and would've gone to a bowl game if just one of our seven losses had been a win. Hold on! In 2009, Alabama had its wins vacated for the 2007 season, as well as wins in a couple of seasons before that year. Did my 2007 Vandy team deserve to go to a bowl??? The reality that year sure made me feel like we didn't deserve a bowl appearance.
College football was racked by awful scandals this past year. Penn State topped the list. Among the penalties Penn State incurred, they had to vacate 112 wins, all but one of which belonged to Joe Paterno. The 2006 Orange Bowl had Paterno face Bobby Bowden's Florida State team. Bowden lost a close one, 26-23. Well, the loss didn't really happen. In fact, Joe Paterno is not the college football coach with the most wins, as he surely thought he was before he died earlier this year -- Bobby Bowden is. Bowden got that distinction three years after he retired. Some reality.
Photoshop makes it possible to look at a picture and not know if it's real. CGI can turn any YouTube video into pure fiction. Basketball shots from helicopters and footballs flying into garbage cans from impossible distances are the norm these days. Well, the images are real, but they don't show reality, or do they? People pass themselves off as celebrities, wedding guests, etc. and others may never be the wiser. Was Han Solo real? He was for me when I was a kid. Harrison Ford may have been standing in front of a camera dressed as Han Solo, but the idea of Han Solo was quite real in my head. I knew he wasn't real, didn't I? Harry Potter is very real for my daughters, especially my older daughter who has read all seven books.
Now everyone in the sports world wants to know what's real. Did Lance Armstrong really win all those Tour de France races? Or at least did he win them fairly, whatever than means? Are all the home runs we see real? Were they real in 1998? Were the dingers hit by Barry Bonds real? Some say they shouldn't count and that Hank Aaron is the true home run king. Will the Hall of Fame not call Bonds next January, even though all his records are still intact? What about Roger Clemens? Will the home-run king (Bonds with 762), the Cy-Young king (Clemens with seven), and the hit king (Pete Rose with 4256) all need to buy a ticket to the museum in Cooperstown, just like everyone else, if they wish to visit?
I want to watch a sporting event and know that the result will stand. I want athletes to play by the rules. I want the great things I saw in the London Olympics to stand up for all time. Queue music for my Pollyanna speech (and, yes, I watched Knots Landing when I was younger -- click here). Putting aside the atrocious crimes at Penn State, recruiting violations, doping, and so forth, rewriting the past with new sporting results just stinks. Lance Armstrong helped to set me on a new research path. I really, really, really want Lance Armstrong to have won all his Tour de France races in an honorable way. Do I have a guess as to whether he did? No. I've no idea what the true reality is.
Of course, the 2006 Tour de France had other doping issues with famous cyclists like Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso getting excluded before the race began. The 2007 Tour de France had its share of doping woes, too. Questions of reality marred those two races.
After the Armstrong news broke, several people asked me, "Do you think he did it?!?" As if I know. I've spent a decade modeling the Tour de France and predicting stage-winning times. Beginning that line of research with Ben Hannas back in 2003, right in the heart of Armstrong's streak, launched my professional career as a sports physicist. Chapter 4 of my book is devoted to Lance Armstrong and Tour de France modeling. Does all of that somehow make me any more knowledgeable as to whether or not Lance Armstrong cheated to win all those Tour de France races? Of course not. Like many, many people, I was enthralled by his story of beating cancer and dominating his sport like no other. But I never met Lance Armstrong, and I've no idea what he does when nobody's watching.
So, what is reality? Surely that's a question pondered by great minds for much of human history. I watched Ben Johnson run the 100-m sprint in the 1988 Summer Olympics in a time of 9.79 s, faster than any human had ever run 100 m. Carl Lewis saw Johnson cross the finish line ahead of him, yet Carl Lewis is listed as the gold-medal winner because of Johnson's famous disqualification three days after the race. The reality for Carl Lewis after that race was that he lost to Johnson. Lewis never got to experience the feeling of having successfully defended his 100-m sprint gold as he crossed the finish line, a feeling Usain Bolt enjoyed last month.
I love college basketball. I watched the championship games in 1992 and 1993 as the Fab Five of Michigan lost both games, yet Michigan vacated those Final-Four appearances -- like they were never there. Imagine what reality shifts would have occurred if Michigan had won one or both of those title games. I'm pretty sure I watched UMass play in the 1996 Final Four, but that school had to vacate its appearance in New Jersey that year. I sat in Assembly Hall in Bloomington and watched the 1997 Final Four Minnesota team beat my beloved Hoosiers in overtime. Oh wait, Minnesota must not have been in Indy that year for the Final Four. Ohio State joined fellow Big-Ten school Michigan State in the 1999 Final Four, but the Buckeyes weren't really there. The Florida sun played with people's eyes that year. Kansas beat Memphis in a thrilling overtime game in the 2008 championship, but, alas, Memphis was really in Tennessee for that game instead of Texas.
Just three days after I turned 37, Alabama beat my Vandy Commodores in football by the score of 24-10. My alma mater finished 5-7 that year and would've gone to a bowl game if just one of our seven losses had been a win. Hold on! In 2009, Alabama had its wins vacated for the 2007 season, as well as wins in a couple of seasons before that year. Did my 2007 Vandy team deserve to go to a bowl??? The reality that year sure made me feel like we didn't deserve a bowl appearance.
College football was racked by awful scandals this past year. Penn State topped the list. Among the penalties Penn State incurred, they had to vacate 112 wins, all but one of which belonged to Joe Paterno. The 2006 Orange Bowl had Paterno face Bobby Bowden's Florida State team. Bowden lost a close one, 26-23. Well, the loss didn't really happen. In fact, Joe Paterno is not the college football coach with the most wins, as he surely thought he was before he died earlier this year -- Bobby Bowden is. Bowden got that distinction three years after he retired. Some reality.
Photoshop makes it possible to look at a picture and not know if it's real. CGI can turn any YouTube video into pure fiction. Basketball shots from helicopters and footballs flying into garbage cans from impossible distances are the norm these days. Well, the images are real, but they don't show reality, or do they? People pass themselves off as celebrities, wedding guests, etc. and others may never be the wiser. Was Han Solo real? He was for me when I was a kid. Harrison Ford may have been standing in front of a camera dressed as Han Solo, but the idea of Han Solo was quite real in my head. I knew he wasn't real, didn't I? Harry Potter is very real for my daughters, especially my older daughter who has read all seven books.
Now everyone in the sports world wants to know what's real. Did Lance Armstrong really win all those Tour de France races? Or at least did he win them fairly, whatever than means? Are all the home runs we see real? Were they real in 1998? Were the dingers hit by Barry Bonds real? Some say they shouldn't count and that Hank Aaron is the true home run king. Will the Hall of Fame not call Bonds next January, even though all his records are still intact? What about Roger Clemens? Will the home-run king (Bonds with 762), the Cy-Young king (Clemens with seven), and the hit king (Pete Rose with 4256) all need to buy a ticket to the museum in Cooperstown, just like everyone else, if they wish to visit?
I want to watch a sporting event and know that the result will stand. I want athletes to play by the rules. I want the great things I saw in the London Olympics to stand up for all time. Queue music for my Pollyanna speech (and, yes, I watched Knots Landing when I was younger -- click here). Putting aside the atrocious crimes at Penn State, recruiting violations, doping, and so forth, rewriting the past with new sporting results just stinks. Lance Armstrong helped to set me on a new research path. I really, really, really want Lance Armstrong to have won all his Tour de France races in an honorable way. Do I have a guess as to whether he did? No. I've no idea what the true reality is.
13 August 2012
Olympic Physics Summary
The 2012 Summer Olympics are over. As overwhelmed as I felt trying to watch as much as I could, even during holiday with my family this past week, I can't believe how fast the last two-and-a-half weeks have gone. London and the rest of the UK are right to feel proud of the fantastic effort they put forth. Great job!
A couple of my colleagues commented to me that they enjoyed reading my blog posts concerning the Olympics, but they found that if I wrote two or three posts on a given day or on consecutive days, they missed some posts at first glance of my blog. That's my fault for not having a particularly well-organized blog! To that end, I though I would summarize in this post the two dozen or so posts that I wrote for the Olympics. I am certainly flattered by anyone who chooses to read what I've written, and I appreciate the kind comments I've received.
Below is a list of the sporting events I wrote about during the Olympics. I give a link to a post or posts I've written that deal with a particular event in parentheses following the event name. In some cases, multiple events link to the same post because of discussions of big physics ideas that I applied to more than one sport.
A couple of my colleagues commented to me that they enjoyed reading my blog posts concerning the Olympics, but they found that if I wrote two or three posts on a given day or on consecutive days, they missed some posts at first glance of my blog. That's my fault for not having a particularly well-organized blog! To that end, I though I would summarize in this post the two dozen or so posts that I wrote for the Olympics. I am certainly flattered by anyone who chooses to read what I've written, and I appreciate the kind comments I've received.
Below is a list of the sporting events I wrote about during the Olympics. I give a link to a post or posts I've written that deal with a particular event in parentheses following the event name. In some cases, multiple events link to the same post because of discussions of big physics ideas that I applied to more than one sport.
- 100-m Sprint (post 1, post 2)
- Archery (post)
- Cycling (post 1, post 2, post 3)
- Discus (post)
- Diving (post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4)
- Fencing (post)
- Field Hockey (post)
- Football/Soccer (post 1, post 2)
- Gymnastics (post)
- High Jump (post)
- Long Jump (post)
- Olympics Commentary (post 1, post 2)
- Pole Vault (post)
- Shooting (post)
- Swimming (post 1, post 2)
- Table Tennis (post)
- Volleyball (post)
- Weightlifting (post)
As tired as my fingers got typing all those posts, I look at the above list of events and feel like I hardly scratched the surface of this past Olympics. I'll try to watch as many replays of the events I missed as I can, and perhaps write a few more blog posts. Following and studying the Tour de France and Summer Olympics have made this summer a lot of fun!
Just 543 more days until the opening ceremony in Sochi, Russia kicks off the 2014 Winter Olympics!
10 August 2012
Queen of 10 m!
China's Chen Ruolin is simply unbeatable once she steps on a platform that sits 10 m (33 feet) above an Olympic pool. Be it synchronized diving or individual diving at 10 m, Chen Ruolin has had gold medals around her neck in both the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics. She essentially ended the 10-m platform final yesterday with an 85.50 on her first dive. The next closest score was 78.00. With four more dives to perform, Chen's competition faced an uphill climb that was simply too steep. Chen's last dive was a back 2 1/2 somersault with 1 1/2 twists. She needed only 30.61 points for gold. She probably could have belly-flopped and earned gold! Instead, she earned 86.40 points, which matched her third dive's score. Not bad for someone who won't be 20 years old until the end of the year!
I wrote an earlier post about how angular momentum conservation plays a crucial role in diving (click here for that post). Here, I'll consider what happens to Chen after she enters the water. On her last dive, I calculate that she left the platform with initial speed 3.34 m/s (12.0 km/hr or 7.47 mph) at 78 degrees from the horizontal. Her time of flight was about 1.8 s. She hit the water moving at about 14.4 m/s (51.8 km/hr or 32.2 mph).
Now consider how fast she would hit the pool bottom in the pernicious scenario that the pool water magically disappears after she dives. The pool is about 5 m (16 feet) deep. Her impact speed on the pool bottom would be 17.5 m/s (62.9 km/hr or 39.1 mph). I obviously never want to see that dive! The point here is that a diver is moving quite fast when hitting the water, and would be moving even faster if the water wasn't there. Even though diving is an "aquatics" event, most of the scoring happens above the water. Except for the entry and splash, the pool serves no purpose other than to slow the diver down.
I've written about drag before, but mostly in the context of projectiles moving through air. Water is about 800 times more dense than air. Consequently, water is capable of much larger drag forces. Divers sometimes angle themselves in such a way that they curve through the water after entry. Other times, they may go straight down until they just make contact with the pool bottom.
Besides drag, another important force on a diver while slowing down in the water is the buoyant force. The density of the human body is roughly 1.062 times that of water. That means that while completely submerged, Chen feels an upward buoyant force on her that is about 94% of her weight. With a mass of just 47 kg (corresponding to a weight of 104 pounds), the upward buoyant force on Chen is approximately 434 N (97.5 pounds) while she is completely underwater.
As fast as divers enter the water, it's a good thing there is plenty of upward force from drag and buoyancy to slow them down over a relatively short distance. Without the pool water, a diver would never make it to the medal stand! That's surely obvious, but it's nice to think about exactly why and how the pool water functions in the sport of diving.
Will Chen Ruolin make it three in a row when the Summer Olympics hits Rio de Janeiro in four years? I won't bet against her!
I wrote an earlier post about how angular momentum conservation plays a crucial role in diving (click here for that post). Here, I'll consider what happens to Chen after she enters the water. On her last dive, I calculate that she left the platform with initial speed 3.34 m/s (12.0 km/hr or 7.47 mph) at 78 degrees from the horizontal. Her time of flight was about 1.8 s. She hit the water moving at about 14.4 m/s (51.8 km/hr or 32.2 mph).
Now consider how fast she would hit the pool bottom in the pernicious scenario that the pool water magically disappears after she dives. The pool is about 5 m (16 feet) deep. Her impact speed on the pool bottom would be 17.5 m/s (62.9 km/hr or 39.1 mph). I obviously never want to see that dive! The point here is that a diver is moving quite fast when hitting the water, and would be moving even faster if the water wasn't there. Even though diving is an "aquatics" event, most of the scoring happens above the water. Except for the entry and splash, the pool serves no purpose other than to slow the diver down.
I've written about drag before, but mostly in the context of projectiles moving through air. Water is about 800 times more dense than air. Consequently, water is capable of much larger drag forces. Divers sometimes angle themselves in such a way that they curve through the water after entry. Other times, they may go straight down until they just make contact with the pool bottom.
Besides drag, another important force on a diver while slowing down in the water is the buoyant force. The density of the human body is roughly 1.062 times that of water. That means that while completely submerged, Chen feels an upward buoyant force on her that is about 94% of her weight. With a mass of just 47 kg (corresponding to a weight of 104 pounds), the upward buoyant force on Chen is approximately 434 N (97.5 pounds) while she is completely underwater.
As fast as divers enter the water, it's a good thing there is plenty of upward force from drag and buoyancy to slow them down over a relatively short distance. Without the pool water, a diver would never make it to the medal stand! That's surely obvious, but it's nice to think about exactly why and how the pool water functions in the sport of diving.
Will Chen Ruolin make it three in a row when the Summer Olympics hits Rio de Janeiro in four years? I won't bet against her!
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