Physics of Sports Video
For this project we were given the assignment to create a sports video showing the physics that are used to preform a certain sports action. After brainstorming on ideas, our group decided to do our sports video on the action of dunking a basketball. We decided on this because we thought it would make a great video and be fun to calculate the "perfect" dunk. For our video we wanted to video tape a San Marin Mustang so we got Calvin Gerasi of the varsity basketball team to dunk for us. The first thing we did was start to type a video script so we would know everything we would have to do in the video and know every thing we would need to calculate. Then we got right to work by filming the footage we need, getting all our measurements, and recording our voice over. Finally we edited the video and uploaded it to YouTube.
Physics Concepts
Velocity- Is distance over time. We used this to find out how much velocity Calvin had as he jumped.
Acceleration-Is the change in distance over the change in time. This can be used to see how much something accelerates when it is moving.
Projectile Motion- Is the velocity an object has from its horizontal velocity and its vertical velocity which makes a parabola. We used projectile motion to see the parabola of the ball as Calvin is dunking.
Force- Is the mass of an object times the acceleration. Impact forces are the force that one object exerts on another object. We mainly used impact forces in our project like finding the force Calvin left the ground with.
Momentum- Is mass times velocity. Momentum is equal to impulse. We found Calvin's momentum and used it to find his impact force since MV=FT and we knew his mass, velocity, and air time.
Impulse- Is force times time. Impulse is equal to momentum. We used Calvin's momentum and impulse to find his impact force.
Vectors- Are numbers with direction. Vectors can be used to find things like the velocity of a ball being thrown.
Acceleration-Is the change in distance over the change in time. This can be used to see how much something accelerates when it is moving.
Projectile Motion- Is the velocity an object has from its horizontal velocity and its vertical velocity which makes a parabola. We used projectile motion to see the parabola of the ball as Calvin is dunking.
Force- Is the mass of an object times the acceleration. Impact forces are the force that one object exerts on another object. We mainly used impact forces in our project like finding the force Calvin left the ground with.
Momentum- Is mass times velocity. Momentum is equal to impulse. We found Calvin's momentum and used it to find his impact force since MV=FT and we knew his mass, velocity, and air time.
Impulse- Is force times time. Impulse is equal to momentum. We used Calvin's momentum and impulse to find his impact force.
Vectors- Are numbers with direction. Vectors can be used to find things like the velocity of a ball being thrown.
Reflection
I really enjoyed this project because it gave me a new outlook on how sports are played. Some things I did very well were getting precise time measurements from the video and getting our group back on track when we occasionally got distracted. I believe our group worked together great most of the time. Something I learned about my self is that I am good at making calculations very precise and getting the correct answer even if it takes a couple of tries. One thing that was very challenging for my group was getting our computer to work properly and actually save our documents in the right format the first time. Something we could still work on is making the voice over a little more clear and making some minor timing fixes. An improvement for our process would be to get the measurements at the same time we video taped Calvin dunking so we could have saved more time for editing.