Physics Models for the 100 Meter Sprint
I know the Summer Olympics are over, but the physics keeps going. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the men’s 100 meter sprint. Perhaps you saw this race, but it was SUPER close. Noah Lyles won the gold medal with a time that was just 0.005 seconds faster than Kishane Thompson. In my book, that’s basically a tie. They should both be winners.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to look at speed vs. time data for these sprinters? Yes, that’s what I want. Unfortunately, you don’t always get what you want. I mean, surely someone has this data — but I’m going to have to build this from stuff I can find online. Yes, of course there is a video of the race — but it doesn’t really allow me to get the position as a function of time data (that I would normally get from video analysis).
But wait! I found a very nice video with data from Ashton Eaton. Check it out.
Clearly Nike and Intel have better data (that I don’t have access to), but this is at a start. I also found this data (from Reddit) with the times for each runner every 10 meters (that’s pretty useful).
