apolo ohno

Here is a quick Apolo Ohno quiz. Which one of these pictures is fake? If you picked picture B - you are probably correct. That is a picture of "Apolo" being catapulted into a pool of slime at the Nickelodeon awards show (click on the link to see the video - I don't think I can embed it). Ok - time to crank out an analysis. I think I could approach this analysis from a couple of directions. Since all I have is a crappy version of the video, I could just look at "could this be possible"? The other analysis I could do would be to measure his acceleration in free fall. Let me start with…

It is winter Olympics time and time for physics. The event that I always gets me thinking about physics is short track speed skating. It is quite interesting to see these skaters turn and lean at such high angles. All it needs is a little sprinkling of physics for flavor. Check out this image of Apolo (apparently, it is not Apollo). How about I start with a force diagram? I know what you are thinking...Fcent....what force is that? Yes, I am going to use the centrifugal force in this case - but remember that sometimes fake forces are awesome. In short, if I want to pretend like Apolo…