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Track Long Jump Drill: Falling Out of a Chair


     For most of break, Girls Indoor Track had practice. One of those practices Meghan, Daniella, and I decided to learn more about the physics behind one of the long jump drills we do at practice. Basically what the drill is, is someone sits on a chair while another person pushes from behind. It is meant to have jumpers practice their landings in the pit. Using Logger Pro, one could find Daniella's distance, height, and x,y velocities.
Distance
     This is Daniella's distance when she was pushed out of the chair. Using the measurements 2.3 and 3.5 meters (from the graph), we found that Daniella moved 1.2 meters.
   





     Using Logger Pro, we could also find her x and y velocities. As you can see Daniella's velocity in the y direction was small and negative because the height of the chair wasn't very high and her fall did not have a lot of momentum in the y direction.

Y-Velocity
   










     Daniella's velocity in the x-direction on the other hand was big and negative as well because she was pushed out of the chair and to the ground.
X-Velocity
Track involves a lot of physics as do all sports and if runners and jumpers knew the physics behind their actions they could improve their times and scores. Runners can figure out what block height would give them the most push forward and they could also take into account the friction of spikes and the track. Using a drill like the one we did for long jumpers, can help those jumpers find the maximum distance they could add to their score. For example, 1.2 meters is about four feet which is a huge distance to be able to add to your jump score. Watching videos of their jumps and seeing these graphs can help jumpers to perfect their form when landing in the pit.




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  1. I feel like I've seen this blog entry before... weird.

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