For this project, our group was given the task improve your performance on a specific sports action by finding the physics ad concepts behind it. Our class had to explore an action and create a video based on the activity. My group decided to look into the sport of golf. We first recorded certain shots that we used to help us explain more about a specific concept. Then we recorded our voices describing the concepts more in detail. We then edited together as a group to make our final product. The video covers the loft of a club, velocity of the golf ball, force on the ball, the mechanical advantage of the golf club, fun facts about golf, and how to improve your performance.
Concepts
Force (Newtons)- Force is identified as a push or pull. To find the force on the ball we used the equation mv=ft (mass times velocity equals force times time). Since we're trying to find the force we are then solving for (f). Once solving we found the force on the ball to be 8000 N, which is equal to 1900 lbs of force. Velocity (meters/second)- Velocity is speed with a given direction. It is calculated by dividing distance by time. We found the the golf club to have a velocity of 40m/s.
Mechanical Acceleration- Mechanical advantage is calculated by dividing the input by the output distance. We interpreted the action of swinging the golf club to be a wheel and axle, where your arms are the output distance and your arms plus the club is the output distance. So the lower the MA, the faster the club will travel resulting in greater force and more distance.
Reflection
I really enjoyed this project! My group worked perfectly together and this time we all contributed to the video equally. We always made sure not to leave anyone behind and to take into consideration everyone's ideas. One thing that I learned about this project was to keep an open mind. At first I wasn't totally in favor with doing golf because I thought it would be boring, much less I knew nothing about it, but soon after starting to work on the video I realized that it's really fun to play golf and that there's lots of factors that contribute to the game. Another thing that I learned was to contribute equally to the project. We each had a specific job/role that we had to be in charge of and it all worked out in the end. The two pits that we had was that we weren't used to listening to our voices on recording and that we couldn't decide on a day to meet to record all the shots we needed for our video.the At first no one liked the sound of their own voice on the video but we soon got used to it. Overall I had a blast learning about golf and hope to work with people in this group again!