Don Lincoln, a physicist, writes that as he watches the Tokyo Olympics, it’s clear that the athletes may not know equations, like his students do, but they certainly have mastered and understood physical principles at a deep level.
I’m a physicist by training and trade, and as I watch these young super men and women accomplishing feats that are utterly inconceivable that I could personally ever do, it’s clear that the athletes have a more visceral understanding of physics than many of my best students. The athletes may not know equations, like my students do, but they certainly have mastered and understood physical principles at a deep level. Gymnastics is one sport that always leaves me completely awed. What these very disciplined, young women do on the balance bar is simply incredible. Simone Biles, currently one of America’s sweethearts and an Olympian, although she has pulled out of the team and most individual events to focus on her mental health, packs some incredible power into her jumps. For instance, in a 2019 video where she dismounts from a balance beam, the power she supplies is impressive (42 kilowatts). An ordinary house uses 1.2 kilowatts on average — that’s the refrigerator, all the electronics, anything electrical. That means that in the very short time she is jumping, she generates the same amount of power that 35 houses are using in an hour. Obviously, she is generating that power for a short time, but it gives you a sense of just how strong her jumps are. And her colleague Sunisa Lee is a similar practical physics expert. The fact that she won the gold medal for 2021 Olympic women’s artistic individual all-around makes that pretty clear. But let’s look at her mastery of the uneven bars — a serious physics challenge. Lee’s ability to know the position of both sets of bars and her ability to use how she rotates her body to do a transfixing routine transcends the mastery of physics students. After all, as she moves, she has « kinetic » energy — energy from being in motion — the faster she is moving, the more kinetic energy she has.
