The Once Every Four Years Physics of Figure Skating Article

[missing]

This one from Smithsonian.com, including a 2010 NBC video of Rachael Flatt demonstrating what's involved with jumping and spinning.

 

[nimi]

There were a couple of things in the article that were new(ish) to me, e.g. the hand weights trick and this bit:

Surprisingly, Richards’ group found that rotating quickly enough was more a mental than a physical challenge for skaters. “There appears to be a speed limit that’s internally wired,” he says, though this maximum speed varies from person to person.

 

[nimi]

Another one, this time from Scientific American, focused on the neuroscience 101. Excerpt:

If one tilts one’s head backward far enough, the body’s reflexes will kick in. Neurons that are responsible for firing when the brain senses the body is off-balance will set off a cascade of signals from the inner ear to the brain stem, then to the spinal cord and finally to the muscles that tell the body to lurch forward for the save. In sports like figure skating, the body is frequently in such unlikely positions. So how do skaters convince their brains that it’s totally okay the body is halfway to a face-plant?

According to researchers, practice can lead to new maps of neurons in the cerebellum, an area in the back of the brain. So when the skater moves into a position anticipated by the cerebellum, it fires neurons to cancel out reflex signals that would interfere with the desired movement. If someone is slipping on ice and someone else is deliberately jumping, “they might be moving through the world in exactly the same way,” says Kathleen Cullen, a neuroscientist at John Hopkins University who in 2015 showed this brain mechanism in an experiment with monkeys. In one case, you want your reflexes to work; in the other, you don’t. The brain learns to quell reflexes when there’s a match between what it expects and what actually happens, she says.

 

[Seerek]

Featuring 2018 US Jr. Silver medalist Dinh Tran and Olympic bronze medalist Tim Goebel, WIRED believes there will never be quintuple jumps

 

[nimi]

Featuring 2018 US Jr. Silver medalist Dinh Tran and Olympic bronze medalist Tim Goebel, WIRED believes there will never be quintuple jumps

This was actually better-than-average vid on the subject. Thanks!

Btw, the professor here who thinks quints aren't really possible was also quoted in the article that kicked off this thread, but that piece featured another professor who was a bit more optimistic:

This leads those who study the physics of ice skating to wonder: are quads a hard limit? “Under the current set of rules, yes, I believe it is,” says Richards. Skaters who go for quadruple jumps are already pulling their arms in very close to the body, so there isn’t much room to improve the moment of inertia and rotate more quickly. And jumping much higher would probably require building more muscle mass, which would slow rotations down.

King is more optimistic. “A quint would potentially be possible,” she says. Historically, she adds, it’s generally taken a few decades to add an extra rotation to a particular figure skating jump, so we shouldn’t expect them until at least the 2030’s. To get from quadruples to quintuples, skaters would need to jump a bit higher, get a little more angular momentum and decrease the moment of inertia. “It’s a matter of looking at how much they could potentially change those numbers realistically,” she says.

ETA: I know, "never read the (youtube) comments" is solid life advice but this time, the top comment made me chuckle:

no need to explain it to me, I've seen Yuri on Ice, thank you very much

 

[goldberry99]

Neil Degrasse Tyson has a podcast Startalk that has a spinoff about the science of sports called Playing With Science. Their new one is about Figure Skating and Sasha Cohen and Jackie Wong are guests.

https://www.startalkradio.net/all-a...olympic-medalist-sasha-cohen/?safari_redirect

It is also available on iTunes etc

 

[aftershocks]

Another one, this time from Scientific American, focused on the neuroscience 101. Excerpt:

I should think that explains some of the science behind the popping reflex. We often hear fans castigating skaters for their failures without understanding the complicated physics, muscle memory, and mind-body connection all factored by the elements of nervous distraction, self-doubt, determination, confidence, training preparation, and force of will.

 

[nimi]

Neil Degrasse Tyson has a podcast Startalk that has a spinoff about the science of sports called Playing With Science. Their new one is about Figure Skating and Sasha Cohen and Jackie Wong are guests.

https://www.startalkradio.net/all-a...olympic-medalist-sasha-cohen/?safari_redirect

It is also available on iTunes etc

Jackie retweeted this excerpt where Sasha Cohen talks about training a quad: https://twitter.com/PlayingwScience/status/988900522747932673

The full 45 min episode is also available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_pla...ing-physics-with-olympic-medalist-sasha-cohen

 

[nimi]

I think this Quartz article on quads (focusing on Nathan) has already been posted but maybe someplace else? At least I'm not seeing it in this thread.

The physics behind figure skating’s most difficult jump