NMS Eighth-Graders Look At The Physics Of Sports

By Jeff White

Eighth-grader Matt Lask used to think that skydiving simply involved jumping out of an airplane. Now thanks to a science project, he understands the physics behind the sport, and that when a jumper leaps from a plane he or she travels for a while at the same speed as the plane.

Students in three eighth grade science classes recently got an opportunity to look at their favorite sports from the perspective of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, in a project called Fantastic Physics.

The task for each student group was to demonstrate how at least one of Newton’s laws of motion and one force acting upon it influence a particular sport. The format for the demonstration was threefold: research, a presentation and a written evaluation.

Research included answering five out of seven questions, ranging from addressing gravity’s effect on a baseball bat to the impact of weather on a given sport. Moreover, students in their demonstrations had to address forces, each of Newton’s laws of motion, and potential and kinetic energy.

The presentation included the use of visual impact aids to demonstrate the various “physical” sides to a particular sport.

Finally, students supplied a written evaluation comparing two sports and how the laws of physics were manifested similarly and differently in each.

Both Matt Lask and Dan McIlrath considered skydiving and the importance of the force of gravity on the sport. “You accelerate to the ground at 9.8 meters per second,” Matt explained. The two also discussed the effects of air resistance, in the form of a deployed parachute, on objects falling to the earth.

Lee Sandberg and Stephen Chuddy researched the physics behind their favorite sport, snowboarding. “Friction is involved in snowboarding,” Stephen said. The two concluded that waxing a snowboard reduces the amount of friction supplied by the mountain’s surface, making it possible to maintain higher speeds down a hill. In contrast, when a snowboarder carves his or her turns, this produces more friction and slows the board’s momentum.

The two concluded that momentum was also important when going off jumps, as a higher momentum means a bigger jump.

 Alex Barry, Casey Palmer and Kaitlyn Sullivan looked at the force-mass relationship in cheerleading. The three concluded that the force needed to throw a “flyer” into the air depended partly on how much mass that flyer possessed.

Almost every sport imaginable was used for the project, from baseball and football to horseback riding, field hockey and paintball.

Paintball, a relatively new sport, interested Tim Stewart and Brett Eastman. The two calculated that a paintball travels almost twice as fast, in feet per second, as a baseball thrown by a professional pitcher. So why does it hurt more to get hit by a baseball than a paintball? “The baseball hurts more due to its size and momentum,” Brett Eastman said.

For students in Mrs Koonce’s science class, the project provided a fun way to get at the core of physics. Most students agreed that studying the physics behind their favorite sports changed the way they looked at sports. “Now I understand skydiving from a scientific side,” said Matt Lask.

Stephen Chuddy figures that he will be able to put what he learned about snowboarding and momentum to use this winter. “We’ll try to get more momentum for bigger jumps.”