If you watched the last summer Olympics, you obviously know who Usain Bolt is, don't you? If you did not, well here is a very brief scoop for you: he is the fastest man ever who has set a new world record in the 100 meter dash during the Beijing Olympic Games. His record stands at 9.69 seconds, which is quite a feat as most humans, even those particularly skilled, will never be able to run this distance below 12 seconds. The previous world record in this discipline also belongs to this Jamaican athletic wonder. It was 9.72 seconds.
He could have run it even faster had he not started celebrating while still running on the track, as we all well remember. He outpaced his rivals so badly that he set a new record and still found time to celebrate his victory before the finish. Amazing. Just amazing!
It turns out that a bunch of physicists from the University of Oslo in Norway, have recently calculated that had Usain Bolt continued to the finish line just like most sprinters do on such occasions, that is without, like, stopping for a drink, he would have set an even more amazing record of 9.55 seconds, in the best case scenario. This seems to jibe rather nicely with the opinion of Glen Mills, Bolt's coach, who said at a recent press conference that Bolt's time in that memorable Beijing dash could have been 9.52 seconds or better.
These fellows also believe that he is likely to bring down his own record to 9.5 sec in the near future given favorable circumstances such as a little bit of wind in the back that was totally absent on the track in Beijing. The wind cannot be too strong though, as this would disqualify the record. Only the records achieved with the wind blowing at speeds below 2 meters per second are officially recognized by the International Association of Athletics Federations, a body in charge of things like that.
Their paper was recently submitted to some electronic archive, where physicists like to submit their work before it gets published in a peer-reviewed journal. While this paper is probably too technical for most people, its main conclusions are spelled out well enough for everyone to understand.
It's interesting to note that the title of the article is "Velocity dispersions in a cluster of stars: How fast could Usain Bolt have run?" implying that the methods of astrophysics can sometimes be used in a totally different setting.
The history of world records in the 100 meter dash starts on July 6, 1912, with the time of 10.6 seconds. This first officially recognized world record belongs to a US sprinter, Don Lippincott. The first man to cross the 10 second barrier was another American athlete, Jim Hines, and this took place on June 20, 1968.
Will Usain Bolt really reach 9.5 seconds? Time will show. Chances are, though, that even if he doesn't, someone else eventually will.
For another version of this article with some relevant references, please see: http://www.eminimethods.com/Usain_Bolt.html
Waldemar Puszkarz, Ph.D., is a web veteran with 15 years of web surfing under his belt. By training, he is a theoretical physicist, but his interests are much broader than science and include trading financial markets, sports betting, poker, and researching online business opportunities. He is also an avid book reader and sports afficionado. Currently he is making his living mostly as a day trader. He has been in the trading trenches for almost a decade during which he has traded a variety of financial instruments. He is the owner and webmaster of Eminimethods (http://www.eminimethods.com) which provides free common sense trading education and simple trading systems for e-mini and stock markets as well as reviews of honest online business opportunities in Meet HOBO section of his site.
This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.
No comments:
Post a Comment