I rather like the idea of putting Dani Pedrosa's clip from the last post in front of students and letting things be very open -- open to estimation, as well. But if one would like to hone the quantification, here are some resources.
What does he ride?
Honda RC212V
How big is he?
About Dani Pedrosa
How sharp is that turn?
Type "Sachsenring Germany" into Google Earth, and it will take you right there. Here's a fun puzzle -- which turn on the circuit is he making in this screenshot? [Spoiler alert]
Note that the shape of the riders' turns is not the shape of the road; they're quite skilled at that whole Principle of Least Action thing. I love how you can see the blackening of the road from the tire-wear from space. I approximated the turn with the red circle below; if anything, it's a little small. The ruler-feature on Google Earth is mighty handy here. I love how you can see the blackening of the road from the tire-wear from space.
Alternately, the circuit specs are here, and here's a map that could also be used to approximate the curvature.
I'll be doing this for sure when I get back to Physics with 11th & 12th graders!
Dorrie—what are you using to do the analysis of the biker? I haven't seen that software before...
ReplyDeletere quantumprogress:
ReplyDeleteFor the 1st still, I made a screenshot from the video clip. I'd happened to be using "Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate 6" at the moment for that, but anything would do, once you've chosen a frame. I drew in the lines with Adobe Illustrator, though that's major overkill, tool-wise. I used the pole to define the vertical direction, then copied and rotated that line 90°.
The second is a screen shot from Goole Earth, which I then loaded into Illustrator to fit a circle to the rider's path and find its center, then back to Google Earth to turn the radius into a distance on the ground.
It was fun to connect the video clip to the satellite pictures. Amazing tech at our fingertips!