Physics of sports: Throwing a football
Throughout our project, we went through many phases and ideas before we could come to our final solution of what we wanted to do. One of the ideas we had, but later discontinued, was tackling. We were basically going to have me wear a bunch of pillows in my shirt and have someone tackle me. Our group and our teacher both agreed that that wouldn't be a good idea, because it wasn't safe, and it would be pretty hard to incorporate physics into that. Another idea that we had was throwing a baseball. The only reason we didn't do this is because we wanted to do something with football, because it was football season. We just said, why don't we just do our project on throwing a football? Everyone seemed to agree upon it, so that is what we ended up sticking with.
The beginning of our movie is basically just an introduction to our project. It tells the viewer what we are focusing on, and gives them the essential purpose of our video. After that, we get into some clips and break things down from a fundamental standpoint. We show them weight transfer, how to hold the football, and what angle you should throw the football at to get maximum distance out of your throw. After those clips, we start to get into the physics portion of our video. We tell the viewer about momentum, force, and angles and how they can improve your game. At the very end of the video, we decided to have some fun and finish it off with some bloopers that we put together from previous takes.
I feel that our video has a good balance between seriousness of physics concepts, and fun components. The reason that this matters so much is because of a few things. One, if your video is so heavily loaded with physics concepts, and numbers, and data, and all that stuff, your viewers are going to get bored, and might even miss the entire point of the entire video. Having said this, you also have to be careful with how much "goofy" and "silly" stuff you put into your video. A little is good, because it keeps the viewers engaged, but too much can be harmful. I think this, because if you have too much nonsense, it will distract the viewers from the actual point you are trying to make. There is a happy medium between those two things, and I think that our video got pretty close to that point.
In this unit, we used a lot of the same concepts as last unit. Some of the concepts we used were force, acceleration, velocity, air resistance, and mass. In our video, we had two different equations that we used to do our calculations. We used the pythagorean theorem, which is a^2+b^2=c^2, and the equation for force, which is F=ma. We found out that the horizontal velocity (a) of the football was 14.24m/s, and the vertical velocity (b) of the football was 11.37m/s. After plugging these two numbers into the pythagorean theorem, we found that the total velocity of the ball was 18.22m/s. To find the force of the quarterback's had on the ball, we needed to find the mass and the acceleration. After getting these two numbers, we found that the force of the quarterback's hand on the ball was 56.08N.
If we didn't learn about any of these concepts, our video would have pretty much been pointless. We wouldn't have anything to explain about throwing the football to our viewers. The whole initial point of this project was to help our sports teams perform better, and to do that by using physics. If we didn't know any physics concepts, we not only wouldn't have been able to explain physics to them, but we wouldn't have been able to help them improve, and that would have just made our video completely pointless.
Overall, I would say that our project went smoothly. There were some challenges that we had to overcome, however. For example, we had a lot of clips, but we were told that they didn't really have anything to do with what we were trying to show. That was probably the biggest challenge our group had to face. Our group bonded pretty well with each other. One big problem that we had, was that we got off task a lot. When we went out to film, sometimes, we would just start throwing the football around and being totally unproductive. In the end we were able to get our filming in, but it did make it a little bit more stressful. Other than that, I think that we had a pretty solid group, and that together, we made a pretty solid science of sports video project.
I have learned quite a bit from this project. As you know, our group did procrastinate during the making of our project. But as they say, you learn much more from your mistakes than from your successes. I learned how to better manage my time, and how to set goals for myself on what to get done in a certain amount of time. I also learned that working hard early, makes for a much less stressful, and much more pleasant experience. I also learned how to tell people when they are slacking off. Before this project, I don't think I would have been able to do that, but know, I can just tell people when they are in the wrong. This will serve me in life, because I will meet a lot of people who don't carry their weight, and I will eventually need to let them know, so that they can shape up.
There are definitely some things that I can work on and improve upon for the future. For one, I need to start reminding myself when I am getting off track. I have a huge tendency to procrastinate, and for me and my group's sake, I really need to work on that. Not procrastinating will end up making my work less rushed, and more thought out and complete. Another thing I need to work on is communicating better with my group mates. There were some instances where we were about to film something, and someone from our group had no idea what was going on. Communication is key in making a good smooth project. While there were ups and downs in our project, we can't let the downs affect us. We have to work past them, and know what to do better next time. But all in all, I would say that our group created a pretty nice project that we were all proud of.
The beginning of our movie is basically just an introduction to our project. It tells the viewer what we are focusing on, and gives them the essential purpose of our video. After that, we get into some clips and break things down from a fundamental standpoint. We show them weight transfer, how to hold the football, and what angle you should throw the football at to get maximum distance out of your throw. After those clips, we start to get into the physics portion of our video. We tell the viewer about momentum, force, and angles and how they can improve your game. At the very end of the video, we decided to have some fun and finish it off with some bloopers that we put together from previous takes.
I feel that our video has a good balance between seriousness of physics concepts, and fun components. The reason that this matters so much is because of a few things. One, if your video is so heavily loaded with physics concepts, and numbers, and data, and all that stuff, your viewers are going to get bored, and might even miss the entire point of the entire video. Having said this, you also have to be careful with how much "goofy" and "silly" stuff you put into your video. A little is good, because it keeps the viewers engaged, but too much can be harmful. I think this, because if you have too much nonsense, it will distract the viewers from the actual point you are trying to make. There is a happy medium between those two things, and I think that our video got pretty close to that point.
In this unit, we used a lot of the same concepts as last unit. Some of the concepts we used were force, acceleration, velocity, air resistance, and mass. In our video, we had two different equations that we used to do our calculations. We used the pythagorean theorem, which is a^2+b^2=c^2, and the equation for force, which is F=ma. We found out that the horizontal velocity (a) of the football was 14.24m/s, and the vertical velocity (b) of the football was 11.37m/s. After plugging these two numbers into the pythagorean theorem, we found that the total velocity of the ball was 18.22m/s. To find the force of the quarterback's had on the ball, we needed to find the mass and the acceleration. After getting these two numbers, we found that the force of the quarterback's hand on the ball was 56.08N.
If we didn't learn about any of these concepts, our video would have pretty much been pointless. We wouldn't have anything to explain about throwing the football to our viewers. The whole initial point of this project was to help our sports teams perform better, and to do that by using physics. If we didn't know any physics concepts, we not only wouldn't have been able to explain physics to them, but we wouldn't have been able to help them improve, and that would have just made our video completely pointless.
Overall, I would say that our project went smoothly. There were some challenges that we had to overcome, however. For example, we had a lot of clips, but we were told that they didn't really have anything to do with what we were trying to show. That was probably the biggest challenge our group had to face. Our group bonded pretty well with each other. One big problem that we had, was that we got off task a lot. When we went out to film, sometimes, we would just start throwing the football around and being totally unproductive. In the end we were able to get our filming in, but it did make it a little bit more stressful. Other than that, I think that we had a pretty solid group, and that together, we made a pretty solid science of sports video project.
I have learned quite a bit from this project. As you know, our group did procrastinate during the making of our project. But as they say, you learn much more from your mistakes than from your successes. I learned how to better manage my time, and how to set goals for myself on what to get done in a certain amount of time. I also learned that working hard early, makes for a much less stressful, and much more pleasant experience. I also learned how to tell people when they are slacking off. Before this project, I don't think I would have been able to do that, but know, I can just tell people when they are in the wrong. This will serve me in life, because I will meet a lot of people who don't carry their weight, and I will eventually need to let them know, so that they can shape up.
There are definitely some things that I can work on and improve upon for the future. For one, I need to start reminding myself when I am getting off track. I have a huge tendency to procrastinate, and for me and my group's sake, I really need to work on that. Not procrastinating will end up making my work less rushed, and more thought out and complete. Another thing I need to work on is communicating better with my group mates. There were some instances where we were about to film something, and someone from our group had no idea what was going on. Communication is key in making a good smooth project. While there were ups and downs in our project, we can't let the downs affect us. We have to work past them, and know what to do better next time. But all in all, I would say that our group created a pretty nice project that we were all proud of.