Abstract

Physics consists in identifying repeatable sequences in our environment and finding the simplest underlying laws. In this conference, the environment is Sports. We will mainly focus on ball games and address problems of internal and external ballistics. The internal ballistics is usually dedicated to phenomena involved inside a cannon. Here, it will be dedicated to the different ways of throwing a ball in order to maximize its velocity. This will make us understand that the ball is thrown in handball and basket, but hit in soccer and volley. Concerning the external ballistics, its purpose is to describe the trajectory of the bullet outside the cannon. Here, we will stress that parabola are rarely observed in sports and that the usual trajectory is a "Tartaglia". We will finally show that the size of sports fields is restricted by this trajectory, first described by Niccolò Tartaglia from Brescia.

C.V.

Christophe Clanet is currently the Director of the Hydrodynamics Laboratory (LadHyX) of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France. After receiving a PhD from the Université de Provence based on work on reactive interfaces, Christophe Clanet carried out a postdoc at UC San Diego on liquid interfaces from 1995 to 1997, before joining the IRPHE laboratory in Marseille. He is currently affiliated to both the ESPCI and Ecole Polytechnique (in Paris), where he teaches fluid mechanics. His recent research activity deals with the physics of different sporting activities, and in this context he has initially focused on soccer balls, studied as elastic shells under stress.

Christophe

CLANET

Sports physics

(the legacy of Niccolò Tartaglia)

Università degli Studi di Genova

Scuola Politecnica di Ingegneria e Architettura

DICCA - Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Chimica e Ambientale

Via Montallegro, 1 - 16145 Genova

Partita IVA 00754150100