Neither of the Free-Ride offspring considers leprechaun trapping a sport. That doesn’t mean, however, that they won’t try to catch a leprechaun.
In view of all the springtime sports excitement (here, here, here, here, and here), the sprogs take this opportunity to consider how their athletic endeavors are actually scientific explorations.
Swimming:
Buoyancy is important here, obviously, but the big lessons have had more to do with how alignment of one bit of the swimmer affects the alignment of the other bits. To wit: chin up leads to legs that sink, while chin down lets legs float up where they ought to be for optimal kicking. After months of experiencing this first hand, the sprogs don’t even need to see a diagram with vectors on it to convince them that the chin-bone is connected (eventually) to the leg-bone.
Some other phenomena swimming has put them in touch with include the interaction of nonisotonic solutions (“There’s pool water in my eye! It stings!”) and, in their dives, the relative incompressibility of water (probably less painful to experience as a belly-flop than to observe from the gallery).
Soccer:
Like swimming, soccer has been teaching the sprogs a lot about subtle differences in body position can have profound differences in the effect produced. The difference here is that they’re learning this in the context of transmitting an impulse to a soccer ball. What happens when you kick with the inside surface of your foot (for the nice, controlled push-pass) compared to the laces of your shoe (for the shot on goal that gets some height)? What happens if, when you kick the ball with your laces, you’re leaning your torso back compared to leaning your torso forward?
Why don’t they teach high school physics on the soccer field?
While it has less to do with gaining intuitions about collisions and trajectories (and gravity), soccer also seems to be helping the sprogs think more geometrically — whether in terms of covering the field with their teammates or working out the best strategy to guard the ball from someone on the other team. What’s pretty cool is that the systems about which they’re thinking geometrically are systems whose parts are in motion.
Ice Skating:
So far, the main intuitions the sprogs are picking up from ice skating have to do with balance and center of gravity (and, of course, putting these concepts to work to get back up after you’ve fallen on your butt). We have not yet discussed the secret of gliding — where the clever design of the ice skate blade harnesses their sprog-like mass to produce enough pressure on the ice to convert the solid water to liquid water they can slip on. (They are enthused about the Zamboni’s steam-driven renewal of the ice surface, of course.)
Also, the contrast between ice skating and roller skating (and in particular, what results from falling in each) has given us the opportunity to discuss the difference between elastic collisions and inelastic collisions.
Jumping Rope:
Younger offspring tried jumping rope for the first time yesterday and was pretty successful. The key concept here is properly synchronizing the circular motion of the rope with the approximately two-dimensional jumping motion. In other words, we’re talking oscillators.
(Also, it seems that most of the jump rope songs revolve around boyfriends or girlfriends, but we can’t be sure the laws of physics demand this.)
* * * * *
Is there a good way to draw on the feel for the physical world that kids develop playing sports when it comes time to formally teach them a subject like physics? Are there fun ways to use sports to trick kids into learning physics? To this parent’s eyes, this looks like an opportunity we ought to be jumping on.
Hmmm… You are right, there should be, but I wish you more success than I had. My kids play sports – baseball and softball, and do great in school, BUT I am unable to convince them to scientificaly, rather than randomly experiment with mass vs velocity, which is very important in hitting!
My oldest did get to build catapults and mouse-trap cars in physics class though, and could have told Behe he was wasting his life on that bad mousetrap analogy.
Of course if you listen too much to ESPN, you get the impression that “chemistry” is a vital ingredient to good team performance…
And Happy St. Paddy’s Day – May They Catch A Rainbow, if not a leprechaun.
As a longtime soccer coach who coached his niece/nephew in their early years (both through the 4-7 year age groups) and also coached at the senior level I’d suggest that the intuitive nature of early player development is key and then serves as a tool for the later teaching. That is to say you don’t trick them into learning the math but rather point out that they already know what you are teaching them.
As an example while young children don’t tend to understand the math of trajectories most kids can pick up where the ball is going to land at a relatively young age. Similarly when you have them throw the ball to each other (ball control drills) most get pretty good at judging how hard and where to throw the ball to get it where you want it (head versus thigh versus foot). Of note, some kids just get the trajectory (some precociously early). These kids seem to have a natural ability to do the trajectories in their heads and are always in the right location when the ball lands. I would suggest that this would serve as an interesting screening tool for early promise in fundamental math skills. If you can subconsciously calculate where the ball will land then you are probably wired to consciously be able to do the math later in life. Similarly it can serve as a useful tool when kids struggle early (assuming that isn’t due to undiagnosed vision problems).
As a learning tool I used to use the soccer to explain several concepts to my nephew as he grew up (he had a horrible 11/12th grade physics teacher).
We have not yet discussed the secret of gliding — where the clever design of the ice skate blade harnesses their sprog-like mass to produce enough pressure on the ice to convert the solid water to liquid water they can slip on.
Actually, I think that explanation has been called into question recently. I don’t remember what the alternate explanation is, but I recall a recent flurry of articles about why ice is slippery, and I think it’s still a bit unclear.
Chad – I also remember that this was called into question. I think bonds were actually being broken but I’ll have to find the article.
Hey, if there are competing proposed mechanisms for ice skating, so much the better — a teachable moment wherein one can discuss the plausibility of each proposal and what kinds of information we might be able to gather to adjudicate between the two.
I found this online:
http://www.exploratorium.com/hockey/skating1.html
Essentially, there’s a quasi-fluid layer on ice that make it slippery. We don’t generate enough pressure to liquefy ice.
I was a pretty small kid when I started doing Taekwondo, so my dad taught me that how hard I could kick wasn’t just a function of my mass, but also had to do with how fast the kick was. I didn’t even have to be tricked into learning physics. The physics gave me hope!
Yes, physics give small kids hope! When I started fencing as a kid I was taught that although I was smaller than anyone else, I could gain an advantage by thinking about it in terms of optimal paths, angles, levers and so on. (It’s still useful to me today, as a young woman fighting mostly men.)