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Fight Like a Physicist

Wednesday, September 25th, 2013 | EMILY HALL | No Comments

I have spent much of my spare time of late preparing for a presentation at the New Zealand Institute of Physics biennial conference coming up later this week. The presentation that I am giving is called “Fight Like a Physicist” and will detail a project that I am working on about learning mechanics through karate.

All this karate mechanics made me think. I know that all sports have huge amounts of Physics in them – but have you really stopped to think about what the Physics applications are in your favourite sports. You can start with the Level 1 basics like conservation of Energy and Newton’s Laws of motion and move all the way up through the mechanics curriculum to the level 3 concepts of rotational motion. As well, depending on the sport, there are all kinds of other fun Physics concepts to be unearthed.

So go out and find out what is the Physics behind your favourite sport. I have listed some cool websites to help you search!

The Science Learning Hub: Sporting Edge

The Science Learning Hub: Cycling

 

And finally some good resources on the Physics of Karate!

KarateChop – Physics– the physics of breaking boards

KinematicsAnalysisofTechniquesHSScience: A program in Italy where a physics teacher and karate teacher work together to provide workshops for students of mechanics.

scientificamerican0479-150: I really like this article not just for its karate content but it is 34 years old and I found the techniques they used to analyse without the equipment we have available currently really cool!!

Farewell Voyager !

Friday, September 13th, 2013 | STEPHEN BRONI | No Comments

I was in my first year at Glasgow University when the Voyager Space craft was launched.  1977. Then its mission was to explore the outer planets. Very few people believed  it would even get that far. painting depicting voyager in stellar dust cloud

Today it’s almost 19 billion km from home! Radio signals will take the best part of a day to get back us from there! How many near misses with asteroids, meteors and comets large and small has it had on its travels? What wonders it  must have `spied’ – If only it had eyes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24026153

Time then to remember  and pay tribute to  Kiwi  Bill Pickering – Sir William Hayward Pickering.  A young will pickering standing next to model rocket

Like many OUASSA students he grew up in rural New Zealand- Havelock at top of South Island in Bill’s case.   Educated at Wellington College he ended up in America as part of the `Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)  at Pasedana California and  then onto  the  space programme in the 1950’s
“From a choice of three NASA space programs, manned space flight, Earth satellites and exploration of the solar system, Pickering opted for the latter. He would take JPL where none had gone before, into deep space to carry out NASA’s massive program for the exploration of the solar system and its planets”
“Accept the Light (of knowledge) and pass it on” was the motto of his  beloved Wellington College. Sounds like great advice for any aspiring modern scientist.
http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/publications/reports/yearbooks/year2004/obituaries/william-pickering/

Where are you now Voyager?  Seen anything even remotely as beautiful as earth?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwMpV3GPWAE
Watch and enjoy