Introduction

Previously available only to our nation’s elite Olympic athletes, using video analysis techniques to improve sports performance is quickly becoming a commonplace practice.  You will “take it to the next level” by striving to perform a quantitative analysis of a sport and give coaching advice based on your lab results and research.

Using high-speed digital cameras, motion normally invisible to the naked eye can now be studied as an extension of the scientist’s senses, and Hollywood films such as The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings have capitalized on digital motion capture technology for amazing special effects.

Goals:

• Learn how to gather quantitative motion data (position, time) using video analysis techniques

• Compare the data, graphs, and video to quantitatively and qualitatively understand the motion
• Discover the difference between constant velocity and constant acceleration
• Use motion capture data to improve athletic performance

PhysicsCentral is proud to present The Physics of Sports, a National Science Foundation funded project produced by Kansas State University.  The Physics of Sports features high-speed motion capture footage of various athletic events and data necessary for quantitative video analysis to improve athletic performance.

Special thanks to Dr. Dean Zollman, Head of the Department of Physics at Kansas State University for his permission and kind assistance in sharing his expertise, passion for physics, and knowledge of sports for this project.  I contacted Dr. Zollman while he was on sabbatical in Germany, and even though he had just broken his leg in a skiing accident he was magnanimous enough to quickly respond to my emails and share his wealth of physics teaching knowledge.

PhysicsCentral is proud to present FlashVid, a National Science Foundation funded project produced by the Department of Physics, Doane College, as part of the Humanized Physics Project.  FlashVid is a brilliant, web-based visual interface to collect data, track motion, and plot position vs. time data to analyze complex kinematic events.

Flash-VidDat was scripted and produced at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska by Andrew Baruth under the direction of Drs. Chris Wentworth and Mark Plano Clark.  Special thanks to this team of dedicated and passionate individuals for sharing their code to further science education and deepen our understanding of physics in motion!

Tracker
Open Source Physics Java Video Analysis & Modeling
 

Tracker is a state-of-the-art video analysis package built on the Open Source Physics (OSP) Java framework.

Special thanks to Professor Brown on his ground-breaking work in physics education, and for sharing the fruits of his labor and expertise to the education community.

Thanks to Dr. Brown for graciously answering all of my questions, and sharing his expertise and passion for physics teaching to give students and teachers a powerful tool to explore the world of motion as never seen before!

Professor Doug Brown
Cabrillo College, California