p2pnet - rss feed: High-tech 2008 Olympics
p2pnet news view | Cool Stuff:- It’s Olympics time and records are being shattered left, right and center.
As usual.
So how do the athletes manage to break the boundaries year after year, decade after decade?
When you’ve spent your whole life —- literally, in the cases of many of the athletes —- preparing for two minutes of supreme effort, you’ll take any edge you can get and the games in the past have been marred by some of the star performers (because that’s what they are) using drugs and other performance-enhancing techniques to push them into the beyond.
This year, so far, there’ve been no reports of anything untoward, but still, times are being whittled down with monotonous regularity.
“Can we please stop fussing over every new Olympic record?” - begs William Saletan in his Slate blog.
“A new record means that an athlete using today’s equipment outperformed an athlete using yesterday’s equipment.
“It’s not a fair fight.”
Like what?
Like the LZR swimn suit with the weird panels. Apparently, it squishes the wearer into a nicely streamlined shape. Estimated average improvement in top swimmers’ best times? Two percent, says Saletan. It was, “designed by NASA scientists and computers, among others,” he says.
Cost? $500.
They’d make good, high-tech girdles as well.
If the swim-suits are Numero Uno in high-tech Olympics gear, what else?
According to Saletan »»»
2. Pool depth. This is the deepest pool ever used in the Olympics. Depth disperses turbulence, reducing resistance.
3. Pool width and gutters. Two extra lanes at the margins disperse waves to gutters, reducing ricochet and resistance.
4. Lane dividers. The plastic ones in Beijing deflect turbulence down instead of sideways, reducing resistance.
5. Starting blocks. Nonskid versions have replaced the old wooden ones, boosting dive propulsion.
6. Video. Recordings and analysis identify target variables such as stroke distance and turns.
7. Medical tests. Swimmers are blood-tested after each race to measure lactic-acid buildup.
8. Sports scientists. They run the monitoring and analysis. The U.S. swim team has four.
And here’s a partial list of advances in other sports:
1. Lighter shoes. The latest material is carbon nanotubes.
2. Asymmetric shoes. Stronger carbon base in the right shoe tilts you to the left to increase speed as you round the track. Left shoe is designed to stabilize you.
3. Ice vest. It lowers your temperature before the race so you can delay overheating for better performance.
4. Hypoxic tents. Sleeping in low-oxygen chambers increases red blood-cell levels.
5. Aluminum javelins. They reduce vibration compared with the old carbon ones.
6. Bicycle wheels. Front wheels with fewer spokes (eight instead of 32) reduce weight and air resistance. So do composite one-piece rear wheels. All frames are carbon.
Now you know 
.
.Stumble It!
Slate blog - Olympic Inflation, August 13, 2008
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August 14th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Why don’t we just build robots to compete?
August 14th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
^^ We already do
Cheers!