There is something extremely special about divers, jumping from intimidatingly tall diving boards as they plunge themselves, throwing in a few leaps, twirls and flips, before landing into the water so gracefully, as if they didn’t just free fall from a platform ten meters above them. To be honest with you, I was convinced that these athletes are born-to-be-divers who were made to defy the laws of physics in such a sophisticated yet polished manner. During this year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo, many divers have proved their skills (or should I say magic?) in various categories of diving, putting me in so much awe that I had to know how they did that. So here it is: my take on diving and its science. Let’s dive right into it.
Let’s start with something not many of us notice. Do you realize that divers shower after every dive? That’s because the temperature of the pool’s water is usually cold, which might affect their performance. So, these athletes have a warm shower during the breaks in-between jumps, to slightly warm their muscles up.
If you’re wondering why divers roll themselves into a ball while rotating mid-air, that has something to do with fitting as many spins as possible. This decreases the moment of inertia and increases the angular speed. But wait, what are those? The moment of inertia is defined as a quantity expressing a body’s tendency to resist angular acceleration. If you grab two poles and tie two empty juice boxes on both ends, and tie two more in the middle, and try to spin it, the pole with juice boxes in the middle would be much quicker, as the mass is positioned on the center. It depends on both mass and angular momentum. The angular momentum here is defined as the quantity of rotation of a body.
In short, when the moment of inertia increases and the angular momentum decreases, the faster a diver can go. With the same juice box on the pole set up, we can say that a diver can spin and fall faster when they’re in the “ball” position, the middle of the pole. What about slowing down? You’ve guessed it! You straighten your body to decrease the moment of inertia and increase angular momentum, but divers use this when they’re nearing the pool. Other than that, divers always try to spin as much as they can while in the air!
Other than how high they can jump and how many tricks they can do, their landing is also a detrimental factor on whether they’d be medalists or not. Let me introduce you to another term—the rip entry, named so from the sound divers make as they enter the water, that is, the sound of paper ripping. The rip entry refers to that perfect fall to the water with as little splash as possible. While having no splash is impossible, divers can drop into the pool very cleanly with a certain technique. As they’re nearing the pool, they have to lock their bodies—thighs locked, arms straight up, body straight, and one more crucial factor, their hand position. Their hands should be facing the surface of the water, one open, while the other wraps around the open hand. See this picture here to get what I mean.
(courtesy of swimathlete.com)
With this hand position, it ‘digs’ a cave for the diver’s body to slip in, minimizing the splash (movement of water particles). After that, you’ll observe that divers stretch their hands right away and swim downwards to pull their bodies into the water.
When I first learnt about all this, I was genuinely impressed with how many things divers have to understand in order to do a seemingly simple jump from a platform. However, after further research, many divers actually start from a really young age, explaining how skilled these athletes are. So, what about you? Are you interested in Olympic diving? I’m not saying it’s easy, though ;).
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