Who doesn’t love epic videos like this? Not only that, there are some great physics assignments in here. Let’s break it down and see what kind of questions can be asked in this video. There’s a lot there. You can consider this homework if you like.
Goal Line Flip
Here, Jerome Simpson does a flip going into the end zone. Oh. I already did this one. I guess you could consider it an example to go on. Here, I looked at how high he jumped and what kind of power it took. Also, is it real or fake? It’s real of course. It was on TV, you can’t fake that.
Double Front Tuck Over a Car
Notice how I said “front tuck” instead of “flip”? That’s because I know all the gymnastics lingo that my daughters use. Well, I still can’t spell “Yurchenko”, but it is fun to say.
In this part of the video, you could make a plot of the guy’s vertical and horizontal position as a function of time. It would be cool to see that his center of mass is just like a tossed ball. Oh, he does push off the front of the car. Also, if he wanted to do a triple front tuck, how fast would he have to spin? With the rotation rate he has in this jump, how high would he have to jump to make a triple front tuck?
High Jumping Basketball Guy
How high does he jump? Does moving his arms like that help him get higher? What about his center of mass?
Rope Swing
You will need to make some estimates here – but I think you can do it. How fast would she be going at the bottom of the swing? How long would she feel weightless? (You can say weightless is an apparent weight less than 10% of standing on Earth). What if you include air drag – how much will that change your answer? I already did something like this before – but not for this exact video.
Giant Basketball Shot
Really, I have done this one before too. Well, I haven’t looked at THIS shot, but similar ones. I have several posts on this, but maybe I will just link to this one. In short, you need to model the motion of a thrown basketball including air resistance forces. Really, the only way to do this is with a numerical model. Python would be a good choice. In the linked post, I looked at how much a thrower could vary the initial throw and still make the shot.
Giant Blob Jump
Have you noticed how many of these titles have the word “giant” in them? Well, I have already looked at the Giant Blog Jump before. How high does the launched person go? What kind of acceleration would the person have on launch? How much energy is lost from the original jumpers to the launched person?
Triple Behind the Back Football Catch
This is Chris Chambers from an NFL Fantasy Football commercial. I don’t know for sure, but I think this is fake. If you want, you could try to show it’s indeed a fakeorama. How? Well, first is to look at the background motion due to the motion of the camera. For many fake videos, they record with a tripod and then add a fake camera shake. Next, you could try to plot the motion of the football – but it might be difficult with the camera angle. You could look at the time of flight and compare that to a ball thrown from some similar distance. I suspect you could estimate the distance pretty easily. There is one last thing. What kind of frictional force would have to be exerted by the glove on the ball to catch it like that?
Behind the Back Baseball
I’m almost positive this one is fake also. In fact, I think I recall reading an article about it being fake. Anyway, you could analyze this one just like the previous football scene.
Giant Skateboard Jump
Do you notice how I am sticking with the “giant” theme whenever possible? This isn’t the coolest video, but it looks like it would work very well with video analysis. The camera is stationary and mostly perpendicular to the motion. You could at least see how fast he was going.
64 Inch Box Jump
I already looked at this one too. It’s not fake.
Rope Swing Jump – It’s Giant
This is another rope swing, so let’s look at something different. How many flips does this guy do? If he pulled his knees in just a bit tighter, he would reduce his moment of inertia. Estimate the number of turns due to this change in position.
Motorcycle Flip
I’m not sure I have a great question – but the video would be easy to do a video analysis of. At least you could find the speed and height of the jump.
Homework Help
Someone is going to ask: “What chapter in the book is this homework from?” The answer: Chapter 1-8, the video analysis section. Here are some video analysis resources for you. Note that some of these are used with an older code, but they still check out.
Sorry, I had more but they are past the expiration date. I need to make some more video analysis tutorials.
The Physics of Awesome People
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The Physics of Awesome People
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The Physics of Awesome People
