Physics and the Olympics :: Sport Sports Olympic Competition

The surpassings are fabled to have originated from a Greek myth, in which Hercules won a race at Olympia, a plain in the small state of Elis, and then decreed that the race should be enacted every four years. The more homogeneously story is that the surpassing festival was a local religious event until 884 BC, when Iphitus, the king of Elis, decided to turn it into a broader festival. To accomplish that, he entered into a temporary truce with other rulers, allowing athletes and others to give out peacefully to Olympia while the festival was going on. In 776 BC, the Greeks establish their chronology on four-year periods, called Olympiads, and the Olympic festival marked the beginning of each Olympiad.Today, the Olympics are still held every four years, and advanced in technology and physical fitness training have enhanced world records to the absolute maximum. All Olympic sports have experienced major changes over the years, but here I will discuss a few of the more famous Olym pic events the 100-meter dash, the javelin throw, and the pole vault. The Greeks actually had a sprint of about 190 metres called the stadion in the ancient Olympics, which was a sprint down a straight memorial and back again. The technology of the day consisted of nothing more than a woody post at one end to help the runner on his return back up the track. Races originally began with the athletes stand upright, with their toes resting in grooves in a stone starting sill - hence the expression toe the marches. False starts were punished by flogging from a judge standing behind the athletes. Later it seems that a starting gate (called the husplex) was utilise, much like that used in horse-racing today.In the modern Olympics, sprinters start from a crouching position, energy against starting blocks to help them accelerate. Blocks were introduced in the late 1920s and were first used at the 1948 Olympic games in London. Instrumented starting blocks appeared in the early 1980s, and consisted of a spring plate and a microswitch. In the late 1980s units establish on strain gauges emerged, although they were very sensitive to the push of the athlete against them and caused some wrong false starts in competitive races. An improved strain-gauge version that worked quite well was introduced in about 1993, and two years later an sharp version was developed.