Olympic Physics Throwdown with Charles Liu

Throwing? Jumping? Wrestling? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly break down the physics of some of the original Olympic events with Geek-in-Chief and astrophysicist Charles Liu. Is there an ultimate technique to winning gold?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. And for this episode, it's going to be all about the Olympics and the science that undergirds all sports that unfold in that great two weeks of human competition. And I got a friend and colleague and co-author to help me out here because he thinks deeply about everything, and that's of course, StarTalk's friend, Charles Liu. Charles, how you doing, man?

• 0:43Charles Liu?

  Hi Neil. Great to see you. Real pleasure.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good to get you back. Let me get your pedigree straight here. So, weren't you dean for a while at the College of Staten Island?

• 0:53Charles Liu?

  No, I directed honors college programs. So, I was a faculty director.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I knew you were man in charge of some stuff.

• 1:01Charles Liu?

  The less in charge I am, the better, frankly.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's great to have you.

• 1:06Charles Liu?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You bring a level of insight and knowledge and expertise that transcends anything any of us have ever brought to the table. And that's why you've earned, I think, without question, the title Geek expertise, right? I think Gary, were you the one who first told us that?

• 1:24Gary O'Reilly?

  No, but I do like the dubbing him the geek in chief.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The geek in chief.

• 1:29Charles Liu?

  The geek in chief.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With geek expertise. And we got Gary. Gary. Hey Neil. My co-host. All right, always good to have you. And Chuck Nice. Hey. So, here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about throwing stuff. All right, it's a big part of the Olympics, at least certainly in track and field. Then we're going to talk about defying gravity. Oh my gosh, so much of what's in the Olympics is about doing what gravity doesn't want you to do.

• 1:54Charles Liu?

  Where is Adina Menzel?

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're gonna round it out with a discussion of wrestling. Freestyle wrestling versus Greco-Roman. We'll learn all about that when we get there. But let's talk about throwing stuff, alright? So, uh, where, the Olympics, they go back, uh, you know, Gary, correct me if I'm wrong, seventeen?

• 2:17Gary O'Reilly?

  No, way back.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking of American independence.

• 2:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, we are seven hundred and seventy-six B.C.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not seventeen seventy-six B.C., seven seventy-six B.C., in Greece, I presume.

• 2:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Of course.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is, this is a, a, a, quite the tradition that we've turned into in modern times.

• 2:40Gary O'Reilly?

  It is, it is the obvious test. We've all, growing up, who's fastest? Who can throw something the furthest? Who can run up that mountain and come back down quickest? Who can jump over this stream the furthest? So it's, it's just basically the answering of all these questions on a, on a four-yearly basis.

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it's a beautiful thing, and it's one of the greatest collaborations of nations outside of the waging of war, so.

• 3:06Charles Liu?

  Well, we have to remember that the Olympic Games were actually interrupted for more than fifteen hundred years. It wasn't until eighteen ninety-six, when the modern Olympics began again, after it ended in the Roman Empire, because indeed, the Romans didn't want the Olympics to keep going.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, why not?

• 3:22Charles Liu?

  I'm not really sure why. I'm not really sure why. Something about nationalism and, and worship of the wrong gods.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We lost! Maybe that's what it was, Chuck. How could this happen? We're the Roman Empire, we lost? That's it! No more Olympics!

• 3:40Charles Liu?

  So much for sportsmanship.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so let's get into the science of throwing stuff. Let's start off with the discus. This is, this is the most classic, I think, of all of the statues of an Olympic competitor, the discus thrower. And, you know, there's the twist of the torso, the arm angled backwards, holding this flying saucer-shaped object, and the, so.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, what can you tell me about the aerodynamics of a discus? Why aren't they just sort of throwing a rock?

• 4:14Charles Liu?

  What is really cool is that a disc is way, way more aerodynamic than a sphere. In fact, it's way more aerodynamic than an airplane. There was a period of time, you remember the aero bee? I don't even know.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I do. That's the farthest object ever thrown by any human being, the aero bee.

• 4:32Charles Liu?

  Aero bees had to be banned from paper airplane contests because people who were making aero bees out of paper were winning them by such large margins, it was considered an unfair advantage.

• 4:42Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, can you tell me what an aero bee? What's an aero bee?

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you don't have, this is for geeks. You're not in this conversation, Chuck.

• 4:49Gary O'Reilly?

  We're out of here. We're spectators. We are spectators at the aero bee games.

• 4:55Charles Liu?

  Imagine, imagine a frisbee, imagine a frisbee, but with a big hole in it. So it's like a very thin donut and then around the edge, the outer edge is a little lip, like a ridge that goes around the outside. So it's sloped downward to the end and then a little tiny ridge around the outside. That turns out to be so aerodynamic that a single flip of the wrist made it farther than any frisbee, farther than any airplane of its size. It's an amazingly aerodynamic object. So if you want to see something fly in the air for a long distance, what you want to do is to throw a disc. And that's the most dramatic thing that you can do back in those days, right? You want to see things go a long way. Throwing a rock is fun, you know, that's what a shot put is.

• 5:38Charles Liu?

  You're basically pushing this big cannonball, but that doesn't go that far, right? The discus, though, can say.

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it did frisbees one better, basically, by opening up the middle and allowing sort of an aerodynamic lift to sustain its trajectory. Okay, so now I read this and I haven't tested it, but I believe it, but maybe you can highlight it for me, that you can throw a discus farther going into the wind than if the wind is behind you.

• 6:08Charles Liu?

  That is correct. It has to do with aerodynamics of things. I don't know, Gary, you probably know this a little better than I do, but the same, the same way that a soccer ball, when it goes up into the air, depending on what direction the wind is coming, you can actually make it go farther.

• 6:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Get a bit of lift.

• 6:22Charles Liu?

  If you do it just right.

• 6:23Gary O'Reilly?

  The other thing is, Neil, when, when you look at some of the discus. It's got a metal rim. So what's happened here is they're loading the outer rim of the discus, which Charles, you won't be able to explain the physics behind that, but that makes it go further.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this will, this will help it sustain its rotational momentum better. If you, if you, if you put the mass of a spinning object at the perimeter, then that's a very stable rotating object, Charles, right?

• 6:54Charles Liu?

  That's right. You have a higher moment of inertia, it's called.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:57Charles Liu?

  Because of the conservation of angular momentum, it is more likely to stay spinning for a longer period of time with less force or torque.

• 7:06Gary O'Reilly?

  And then imagine the technique to get across the discus circle in that rotating technique that the throwers use. And then you incorporate the, the physics of the discus itself. It's, it's really.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So it seems to me, so the, your body does a spin. Your arm also pivots at the shoulder and your fingers flick at the wrist to get the thing spinning.

• 7:34Gary O'Reilly?

  You're getting it.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you get the combination of this musculoskeletal launching a pad. Right? Is that a fair way to think about it, Charles?

• 7:43Charles Liu?

  Yeah, it's all the different hinges from which you can gain extra torque. In the same way that when you're kicking a soccer ball, right? You've got your toe, your ankle, your knee, your hip, and even your torso giving it all the different power. Each one giving it a little extra.

• 8:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you can combine those, you could be quite deadly out there with your power.

• 8:04Charles Liu?

  Devastating.

• 8:05Gary O'Reilly?

  You start by crouching slightly, so you preload your, your own body to explode around.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 8:11Gary O'Reilly?

  This is stacked with science. It's an amazing event to watch.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I wondered that, you know, I never thought about that, that. That's right. When they begin their spin, they're actually crouched. How about the hammer throw?

• 8:23Charles Liu?

  Oh, that's a round ball that gets tossed. Now, in the olden days, I bet the Greeks did not put it on a metal wire because they didn't know how to build wire, right? Or even metal balls for that matter. They probably literally threw a hammer, which is like a big, long thing that they would use to whack things, right? But they actually spin around. This would be a stick onto which attached was some heavy object at the end. And you tried to throw it and see how far you could get it. You're allowed to spin. But really, the spinning process, you have to keep your center of weight moving in a straight line. So it's a very complicated dance. It's a ballet, really, only instead of a beautiful pirouette with someone wearing a tutu, right?

• 9:06Charles Liu?

  It's a brutal spin with a gigantic individual holding a 16-pound ball on a wire and spinning beautifully and accurately.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the release point has to be exactly sort of tangent to the movement so that all the spinning force can go to the linear trajectory of the ball itself.

• 9:30Charles Liu?

  Of all the field sports in the Olympics, the hammer throw is the one I would least like to be a judge for in the pit.

• 9:37Chuck Nice?

  Because you have to stand in the path of the hammer. Well, I'll tell you this, Marcel. I don't want to watch it anymore because I just want to see them do it in tutus now.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The tutu hammer throw.

• 9:53Chuck Nice?

  The tutu hammer throw, man.

• 9:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Seeing as we're reinventing, Charles, what happens if I extend the length of the wire on this 16-pound cannonball and then I start to rotate?

• 10:05Charles Liu?

  Well, that's great. You see, the longer you have the wire, the larger the moment of inertia is. Moment of inertia being M R squared, the mass times the distance times the distance again. And so to translate that rotational motion into linear motion, the more, the higher the moment of inertia, the more angular momentum you get if you're spinning it at the same angular velocity. Just fancy just means that if you have a certain number of rotations per second, the longer you have of the string, the farther the hammer will go when you let it go.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the hammer is actually moving faster. That's all, right? Right, it's the same reason why you are going faster on the outer horse in a merry-go-round than you are on an inner horse, even though everyone's on the same platter.

• 10:54Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 10:55Charles Liu?

  That's why everyone, yeah, if ever you're burning a kid to a merry-go-round, take an outside as opposed to an inside loop. The outside person will be moving much faster and having a grander.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, like it's twice as fast as the ones halfway in.

• 11:11Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. Okay, so now, now, tell me about the javelin. My big disappointment was to learn that people were getting so good at the javelin that.

• 11:20Chuck Nice?

  People in the stands were dying?

• 11:23Charles Liu?

  Almost, almost.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That they had to put like an aerodynamic drag on the back of the javelin. That ain't right. That, no, something's wrong with it.

• 11:31Charles Liu?

  Well, it's a little bit different from that, simply because the javelin has to come down point first into the ground, otherwise you run into problems. If it skims along the surface and it hits the ground, goes bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, right?

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, where did it land? Right, right.

• 11:46Charles Liu?

  Right, where did it land? And, and there's controversies involved with that. And that, if you make sure that the javelin lands point first in the ground, you can set yourself far enough back in the stands that you don't worry about being injured. So they had to move the center of mass of the spear or the javelin closer toward the tip. And what happened was, at first, when they did that, clever speared, or excuse me, clever javelin designers started messing with the back end to make it act like, you know, feathers, like fetching in an arrow or something, to try to let it fly longer and farther and things like that. And so that got banned after a short period of time.

• 12:27Charles Liu?

  Uh, but the key is that nowadays, the javelin is more like you throw it up in the air and it's got to come down and it's naturally going to jab into the ground at some location.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  So what is the, what is the optimum angle that you have to release a javelin to get it to go the farthest?

• 12:43Charles Liu?

  Well, indoors, right? Without any air, it's 45 degrees.

• 12:50Charles Liu?

  Uh, yeah.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this is the, on the, on the moon, the, the airless arena. This is where we're gonna do this, okay?

• 12:57Charles Liu?

  Right. The answer is always forty-five degrees.

• 12:59Gary O'Reilly?

  But let's be honest, Charles, you're not gonna be throwing javelins indoors very much.

• 13:03Charles Liu?

  No, you know what? I've wondered, in indoor track and field championships, are there actually javelins?

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there's not.

• 13:09Gary O'Reilly?

  The only thing you'll ever have is shot put indoors. None of the other throwing events are allowed.

• 13:14Charles Liu?

  Too bad.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even maybe, yeah, yeah, okay.

• 13:16Charles Liu?

  Oh, well, that, that explains it, yes. Uh, the wind determines a lot. Uh, again, that, as we were talking about with the discus, with anything in the air, which direction, whether it's an updraft or a downdraft, whether it's a headwind or a tailwind, that makes all the difference in any projectile. I don't have the actual angles depending on that, but I know that compensations must be made.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and this forty-five degree angle, you learn that in Physics 101, where you want it to go forward and up with the same initial velocity, and that'll carry it farthest to its destination. And that angle's forty-five degrees every time, that's right.

• 13:53Gary O'Reilly?

  They used to teach us when, when we were throwing javelins to pull through the javelin. You start with a certain angle of approach where it's basically horizontal to the ground, then it tilts up, you keep it really close to your ear, and then you pull through almost the handle, the binding, through the center point, and it flies, and then it sails, and then it comes down. But since they were throwing, they got one German thrower, whose name I cannot quite remember, threw over a hundred meters, which will have scared the living daylights out of anybody else at the far end of the stadium. And then...

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially the runners who were thinking, "I, I almost got this, I'm on the back stretch", and then he gets impaled, coming around.

• 14:32Gary O'Reilly?

  And this, you know, you've got all these other events happening while javelins are being thrown, so they just had to go, "Uh-oh, nope, gotta make a change."

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, and, and lastly, the shot put, that's the bluntest of all instruments here. And, uh, this, th- this has like been in every single Olympic since eighteen ninety-six. And I understand it dates back to like the Middle Ages, is that right? When soldiers hurled cannonballs to compete? Is this, do I have this right here?

• 15:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I, I think what we have, Neil, is in between battles, a bunch, bunch of drunken soldiers picked up cannonballs and said, "Which one of us drunken idiots can throw this the furthest?" That sounds a lot like reality to me.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:17Charles Liu?

  Makes sense to me.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So sixteen pound.

• 15:21Chuck Nice?

  Or maybe, maybe they just ran out of gunpowder.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I will throw this at you.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carry this cannonball over and drop it on their head and then come back for another one.

• 15:35Chuck Nice?

  While you're at it, everybody throw your musket pellets.

• 15:39Gary O'Reilly?

  You say that, but you know what? Just in the last couple of weeks from the time we're recording this, in the last week, I think, Ryan Crowzer, USA, broke the world record. Seventy-six feet with a sixteen-pound cannonball. Achoo, man, that's, that's brutally strong and just.

• 15:59Charles Liu?

  Unbelievable.

• 15:59Gary O'Reilly?

  And he, you know, there's that technique where you glide across the circle?

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I've seen that.

• 16:05Gary O'Reilly?

  We've seen all of that and there's the crouch. This is now using the discus rotation to achieve these distances.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so they're coiling energy like, like the discus people do. Okay, so it's tactical and, and I guess it's allowed, right? They're not gonna say you can't do that.

• 16:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Not just big guys with a big old choke mark under the chin.

• 16:27Charles Liu?

  But what about the power of the guttural yell?

• 16:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Necessary.

• 16:31Charles Liu?

  I mean, the, the vocalization of shotputters, I think, is the most amazing that you hear of any of those athletes, just like this, this elephant, alligator, Godzilla kind of auditory utterance that simply cannot be matched by any other human being.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, so, so Charles, last question before we, we gotta take a quick break here. The, it seems to me the shot put would be the least susceptible to aerodynamics. And so that one you'd wanna sort of throw at a forty-five degree angle, I would say, probably.

• 17:06Charles Liu?

  At almost all times, yeah, I don't see any reason why.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't see, neither do I.

• 17:10Charles Liu?

  Unless you're in a hurricane or something, you know, that it's gonna affect this round, spherical, solid metal ball.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. Alright, let's take a short break and we're gonna say goodbye to throwing and hello to jumping and all other things we do to defy the law of gravity. So, let's see what that looks like on the other side. This is StarTalk Sports Edition: The Olympics.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about the Olympics and in this segment, we're talking about the jumping sports in track and field. What do we have? We've got the long jump, the triple jump, and the high jump. There you go. And people just trying to defy gravity. And so, Charles, let's talk a little bit about the long jump.

• 18:21Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you know about why it took so long for that record to be broken?

• 18:29Charles Liu?

  You mean Bob Beaman?

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bob Beaman, back in 1968.

• 18:32Charles Liu?

  Yeah, the Mexico City. Of course, you know, records are meant to be broken. Usually, though, as far as distance-type jumping things or height things, only a few inches at a time. But the strange thing about the 1968 Bob Beaman record was that he broke the previous record by such a large amount.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was more than a foot or something, yeah.

• 18:53Charles Liu?

  Yeah. It was, it went from 27 feet something to 29 feet something. And it was a whole decade before anyone even jumped 28 feet, right? So people were wondering what the heck happened that time. There are a lot of different things. But one of the possibilities is that, first of all, there was a small tailwind. It was allowable. It was a wind, it was not so fast that it was wind-aided and therefore didn't count in the world records, but there was a little bit of a wind.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It gives him a little bit, okay, but it's not gonna give him a foot.

• 19:24Charles Liu?

  The Mexico City is a mile high. That is the key that most people think was the case, Gary. You're absolutely right.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no.

• 19:32Charles Liu?

  Because Mexico City's altitude allowed him to go that extra distance. If he was sufficiently cardiovascularily trained to produce the same amount of muscle power.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so here's, here's my issue with that. I got an issue.

• 19:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Here's my issue. And I gotta bring Chuck in this. Chuck, this, this white man trying to take away the black man's achievement by crediting something else with it.

• 19:57Gary O'Reilly?

  No, I am not.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 19:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't you dare say that.

• 20:00Charles Liu?

  Excuse me?

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Normally Chuck is like covering me there. Now I'm the one who's saying it. Okay. Uh, listen, I, I mean, go ahead. It's not because he was better than everybody else. It's because the wind helped him and the thing, and the aliens built the pyramids and, you know, okay.

• 20:16Charles Liu?

  Oh, dude.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here you go. Here you go.

• 20:18Charles Liu?

  Dude, dude, dude.

• 20:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If, no, here's a, here's a simple if statement. And Charles Liu, you tell me if my if statement is flawed. If the wind and the thin air helped Bob Beaman break the record by more than a foot, then everybody would have jumped more than a foot.

• 20:36Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they did not. Don't tell me the thin air did it. They would have done significantly better, if not just a foot. I, and, and not, not, no one else jumped.

• 20:47Gary O'Reilly?

  We would have to check the, the, the final placings in that long jump to see if other people did get a boost. Or this is absolutely down to Bob Beaman just jumping out of the sandpit here.

• 20:58Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if they did get a boost, did they get a foot boost? And I'm, I'm guessing not here.

• 21:03Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so let us instead credit the thin air and instead of that say, this man kicked some ass at that Olympics. Let me hear the two of you say that.

• 21:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, he totally did it. I, I don't, but we're looking at,

• 21:16Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 21:16Gary O'Reilly?

  are there other mitigating factors? Because don't forget, the current world record is held, held by Mike Powell, another USA long jumper.

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was done a zillion years ago, too.

• 21:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Nineteen ninety-one. Not quite a zillion, but I know where you're headed with that. Um, and it's only two inches further.

• 21:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Bob Beaman. I mean, he's just.

• 21:36Chuck Nice?

  So here, and by the way, he's somebody who's chasing that.

• 21:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:42Chuck Nice?

  So he's training, he's training towards that.

• 21:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beat that record.

• 21:47Chuck Nice?

  He's trained towards, whereas Beaman wasn't, he actually just did it. And I say, if you're looking for a mitigating factor, somebody yell cops.

• 22:00Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, we can, we can look at the mitigating factors, Charles. And in the end, we just have to look at an athlete and go, that is what the Olympics are about. Someone turns up and says, you want to see what the best is all about? This is what I got.

• 22:15Charles Liu?

  And it was one amazing jump that far exceeded anybody else on that day. It was really quite amazing.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I'm just saying, therefore you can't credit the other thing. Give, credit the man and not everything else.

• 22:27Gary O'Reilly?

  I credit the athlete all the time, Neil. It's in my DNA to do that. I'm just looking at was the altitude, was a tailwind. If the tailwind's too high, the jump's invalid. Simple as that. So they could, that was not an aspect. The altitude.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm. Would it have made any difference?

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 22:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Not a.

• 22:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I got one. So, so Charles, what do you think? Because I'm not, I don't like all this stuff about rules. Why don't they just have you jump as far as you can from wherever is your starting point? Why does your foot have to exactly? Because if you, if you miss it by a centimeter, that's a centimeter less of a distance you end up jumping because they don't start it from the tip of your toe. They start it from the tip of the line, wherever your foot lands related to it.

• 23:14Charles Liu?

  I think, I think that's the difference between an activity as a human physical feat and an activity as a competitive sport. Right? The concept of the rule.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, Charles, why you, why you always argue me out of my arguments?

• 23:31Charles Liu?

  I, I'm sorry.

• 23:32Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, no.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought I had a good.

• 23:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a really good point.

• 23:36Charles Liu?

  But your point is exactly right, like, why do we have rules, right? Why do people then cheat and try to break the rules?

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:44Charles Liu?

  This happens, of course, unfortunately, even in the Olympics. Tour de France, NFL football, baseball, choose whatever you want, right? People agree to rules because they feel like the game would be more fun if everyone followed them. But when victory becomes more significant than sport, then you wind up with everyone trying to do things that are not following the rules and getting away with it.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm.

• 24:10Charles Liu?

  Right?

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:11Charles Liu?

  But I think you're absolutely right on this important point, Neil. We could have a world record measurement for how far a human being jumps. Right? And that would be a different world record than the high jump or the long jump or the triple jump world record in the Olympics or in world competition. They're just two different things.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it, got it, got it. Well, let's use that as an excuse to move on to the triple jump.

• 24:35Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, it seems to me one jump should have been just fine. Now we gotta put three jumps in it. And it's got this weird body motion. And it's like, what the, what are you doing and why are you doing, who came up with this? That's what I'm thinking every time I see the triple jump.

• 24:50Charles Liu?

  Another strange rule thing. I think Chuck, you, you, you know this rule really well, right? Like your first.

• 24:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the hop is the first step.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it used to be called the hop, step and jump.

• 25:01Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I remember correctly, in the old days.

• 25:03Chuck Nice?

  So the hop is you land on this, you take off on one foot and land on the same foot.

• 25:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 25:09Chuck Nice?

  Which gives you that janky body movement.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a total janky, that's the word, right?

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  And then the step is you take off on the same foot that you, that you landed and you land on your opposite foot.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 25:21Chuck Nice?

  And then the jump is you take off on that foot and you land on both feet.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On two feet.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  On two feet. So that's, that's your jump.

• 25:29Charles Liu?

  Wow.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just a crazy, who, who thought that up?

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  Who did think of that? Because it is insane.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's insane. I don't.

• 25:36Charles Liu?

  But it's cool. But it's cool, because it's got this extra complication to it. And, and the physics of the triple jump is very different from the long jump in one crucial respect. Because you're bouncing off the ground. Right? You have to do something completely unnatural to humans. And that is not absorb impact. Like land on your toes.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my knees hurt already. I know, right? My knees are hurting, right?

• 26:00Charles Liu?

  That's right. If you land on, like, you're, you're, we are taught that when we jump somewhere, we want to land on our toes and then slowly like sink into our ankles and then let our knees bounce and our hips bounce so that we absorb as much impact as possible. If you do that, you ruin your triple jump. So your hop and your step, you want to land on your heel. If you possibly can. You want to bounce off instantaneously and have as little contact with the ground as possible. Meanwhile, your upper body, right? It doesn't matter what your upper body does in the air. It only matters what happens when you're in contact with the ground.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the ground.

• 26:36Charles Liu?

  A moment that you hit the ground during that very, very short contact.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then your arms have to want to help, you want to swing your arms up.

• 26:42Charles Liu?

  Swing forward, right? So you got to swing your arms forward to get your momentum forward as much as, up as much as possible. You got to bounce up off of this locked ankle or whatever it is so that you don't get a squish there. And then you do it again on the other foot and then you got to swing again forward and then you can land in such a way that you don't break the rest of your bones.

• 27:03Gary O'Reilly?

  So Charles, how much force goes through the leg that hits?

• 27:08Charles Liu?

  Well.

• 27:09Gary O'Reilly?

  The runway? I mean, it must be outrageous.

• 27:13Charles Liu?

  Based on the calculations that I have seen on sports medicine sort of studies. When you make that hit, you are putting somewhere between fifteen and twenty times more force on your heel or on your ankle or on your knees than you normally would when you have your regular body weight landing on top of it in a regular step. So you are, you are really straining those joints and those muscles and those ligaments.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the combination of the forward motion from having run fast to make that first jump and you were airborne and now you come down on it and you have to spring back up to get your next jump.

• 27:51Charles Liu?

  Yep.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all of that combined, that's crazy.

• 27:53Charles Liu?

  Brut- brutally hard.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just don't know who invented the sport.

• 27:57Gary O'Reilly?

  It must be the English. It must be the English.

• 28:00Charles Liu?

  The English. The world record holder is Jonathan Edwards of Great Britain. And, and that, and that record has lasted for a quarter century now. Even longer than Bob Beaman's world record in the long jump.

• 28:13Gary O'Reilly?

  But he had a technique, Charles. When he would contact, his arms would go backwards. So that must be altering his center of mass, his center of gravity, or?

• 28:23Charles Liu?

  Without doubt, right. A lot of people think that one key to being a successful triple jumper is actually to land with as much of your body weight behind your landing point as possible, which then allows you to swing that body forward, giving yourself an additional extra bit of momentum.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's more swing. You get more swing for it. I see. I got it. All right.

• 28:46Charles Liu?

  Yeah, you ain't got.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I think if the triple jump was never invented, no one would miss it. Okay? I'm just thinking.

• 28:53Charles Liu?

  Wrong. I love the triple jump. It's the best, man.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One more event before we close out this segment. The high jump. The high jump. I'm looking at these bars that these people are jumping over. I say, how do they even do this? What's going on? Let's go back to the 68 Olympics. Charles, take us there.

• 29:12Charles Liu?

  Dick Fosbury, following the rules, but through his own strategy, figured out that if he kept his center of mass below the bar, but was able to get the rest of his body over the bar, piece by piece, then he would be able to jump higher based on the rules of the high jump.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Piece by piece. Yeah, you unscrew your leg, put it over.

• 29:35Charles Liu?

  Yeah. Imagine a marionette doll, and that's what Dick Fosbury did. He jumped, and he got his head over, and then let his head go under while he got his torso over, and then let his torso go under the bar while his legs went over, and then he let his legs go under the bar while his feet went over, and then eventually he flopped down backwards on his head and shoulders onto the mat.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying is for every part of his body that was over the bar, all the rest of his body was under the bar.

• 30:07Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Below the elevation of the bar, so that his center of mass itself never actually went above the bar.

• 30:15Charles Liu?

  That's right. Not to mention that his technique allowed him to do this flowing thing, which gave him the ability to kind of snake over the bar in a way that no one had ever thought to do before, but was perfectly legal.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  Well, then why not, why not land, why land on your back then?

• 30:34Charles Liu?

  How can you land on your feet?

• 30:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Squishy mat.

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  No, not on your feet. Like, it's a mat there. Why not, the motion you described, why not just arc all the way over and keep, keep going?

• 30:46Charles Liu?

  So you land on your face?

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck.

• 30:51Charles Liu?

  You know, if you could do that, I could see a roll that lands on your face, but you know, even for a soft mat, I do not want to squish my nose on one of those things falling.

• 31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And given how far they're falling down, I think we, we recognize everyone since Fosbury does this Fosbury flop over the bar. He changed the sport.

• 31:08Charles Liu?

  Absolutely. And, oh, remember it was Mexico City, 1968, maybe the altitude.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. What are you gonna do with that one, Gary?

• 31:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all right, so the sport's forever been changed and I'm, I'm, I'm impressed by that. My, my father, when he ran track, they didn't have these big foam cushions and you landed in sawdust on the other side.

• 31:30Charles Liu?

  Ow.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 31:31Chuck Nice?

  Well, now, now I know why you don't land on your face.

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just like in the last 30 seconds, Charles, tell me about the, the pole vault. Well, in principle, that could just keep getting higher and higher if people run faster and faster and have a strong enough pole. And you got to run fast enough to, to get your body to be springable, right?

• 31:56Charles Liu?

  Yep, yep. So there's a little bit of a jump on your part, but mostly it's the spring of the pole that allows you to get over. The thing is, these days with pole vault, right, the pole itself becomes the most important part of the equation. Uh, in the olden days, if you just used a stick, you were literally pushing off of the pole in order to get yourself over. Now you need to rely on the elasticity of the pole to spring you upward before you push off the pole. And now instead of pushing with your arm, you're really just trying to let the go and then get the rest of your body over.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. And so you don't. So you, you wanna be sort of rigid arms so that you don't absorb that flex with your elbow when you, as you're going up, or at least you wanna push with it so that you can, uh, six. Now, I can, I can picture the cartoon now. Someone does it with a new technology and they just get flung across the track.

• 32:51Gary O'Reilly?

  The thing is, Neil, the pole itself now is a composite construction. So if you've got carbon fiber that strengthens. That is on one side, on the other side is not as strong. So you have to make sure you get the right, the pole in the right place. Otherwise.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's not a uniform medium?

• 33:09Gary O'Reilly?

  From what I, from what I can gather, that's the case. So you really have to be about, it's like a kick point in a hockey stick.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Flexibility which is giving you an extra thing. So this is a technical, uh, advantage for, for jumping in terms of vaulting rather than the, the pure jumping of a human being.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And here I am saying it on StarTalk. I've said this before, but now on this platform, I will declare that in a high jump, the position of your body is fundamentally equivalent to what Fosbury did going over his high jump bar. Yet the pole vaulters twist and then go feet first facing downward rather than facing upwards. And as a result, I think if they converted their jump into a Fosbury jump, you can add another six inches on the pole vault record in a, in an instant.

• 34:04Charles Liu?

  Uh.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:05Charles Liu?

  Maybe. I, no, let me tell you why you might not be correct. And that is simply because the, the pole, how it gives you so much more of a forward motion, that if you spend your time flipping your body around, how are you going to push off the pole and give yourself a little verticality?

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's backwards behind you, yeah, okay.

• 34:27Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you lose.

• 34:28Charles Liu?

  That might be the thing that you.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You lose the thing, okay. There's, I bet there's some thing you could do though. Let's bring Fosbury back and have him try, have him invent some new maneuver. We gotta take a quick break on StarTalk Sports Edition, the Olympics. When we come back, we're going to talk about wrestling, freestyle versus Greco-Roman, something I used to do, so I might have something to say about it on StarTalk.

• 35:09Chuck Nice?

  It's a pleasure to give a Patreon shout out to Avneesh Joshi, Thomas Harshbarger, and Torey Stott. Guys, thanks so much for what you do for us. Without you, we couldn't make it across the cosmos and bring this show to the universe. And for those of you interested in your own Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com/stargtowradio and support us.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about the Olympics. And I love thinking, talking about sports and the physics of sports. And however good I am at that, Charles Liu is better. And that's why we've got Charles Liu on the show. Charles, always good to have you.

• 35:56Charles Liu?

  Oh, pleasure. Thank you so much.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just thanks over all these years for being such a good friend of StarTalk. Because when

• 36:01Charles Liu?

  It has been my pleasure.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When the going gets tough, we call Charles.

• 36:06Charles Liu?

  And it is my pleasure. Thanks.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't think you did any professional sports. We have Gary, who gives us

• 36:11Charles Liu?

  Not professional, no.

• 36:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Street cred Gary. And we only, I only just learned in this episode, the man threw the javelin and the discus. So go for Gary there. All right. And Chuck, so as many people know, I wrestled. I wrestled in high school. I was captain of the team and undefeated. Wrestled in college, a little bit of graduate school. But when I got to college, after an undefeated record in high school, it was like a whole other, whole nother, nother. Because I started wrestling people who would like, these were like farm boys, okay, from the Midwest. That's all. There you go. That's it. I don't know what they've been carrying with logs around the cabin, you know, whatever is the stereotype of the farm boy, that's

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  who I was wrestling. And so then these are regions of the country that had, where wrestling is very serious. They fill arenas. And so I was delighted to not be the best. Because when you're the best, what is your, how do you learn? What do you do? And so, so I had a losing record for most of my time in college. But that didn't matter. It was my favorite sport then, and it continues to be. So, and that was intercollegiate wrestling, obviously not professional wrestling, okay? And international rules are a little more strict than what we do just intercollegiate here in the United States. And in the Olympics, there's freestyle and Greco-Roman. So that's what we have going on there.

• 37:36Chuck Nice?

  What is freestyle?

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so it's easier to know what freestyle is once I tell you what Greco-Roman is. So Greco-Roman wrestling is just your upper body. So you can't sweep the leg. No, you can't do that. You can't, you can't use your leg for anything. It is just your upper body strength, your arms, you know, and the rest. So you have people who tend to be very good at body throws, right? You try to get a grip of their upper torso and you're maneuvering for a position. And ideally, you'll execute a body throw where the throw includes getting

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  their back to the mat. And then it's one smooth motion. And so those guys tend to have spindly legs and huge torsos. But

• 38:27Charles Liu?

  Now, what is, what is a passivity point in Greco-Roman?

• 38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, yeah. So what happened, and I don't know when that came in, but what happened was that in both, freestyle and in Greco-Roman, they started putting in rules to speed up the game. Okay. And to force you to always be attacking. And because you used to sort of jockey for position and feel the person out, and minutes would go by and nothing would happen. All right. And so since Olympics, still, they have to make money with their TV rights. I don't know if money did it, or just fan interest, or whatever. But they started, it started costing you if you were not perceived by the referee as always trying

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to be an aggressor. And if you're always just being on the receiving end and not the delivering end, that can cost you on both sides. Okay. And so, I mean, sorry, both branches of the sport. So that sped up the game. In fact, there's, and I forgot the exact conditions under which this is true. But if you are tied at the end in points, because you get points on a takedown, and if your back is exposed to the mat, there are various ways you earn points. If you're tied, they will start the next round with each of you already being granted a grip around the other person's torso.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You already have a grip around them. This is like that new rule in baseball where in extra innings, they start the inning with a runner on second base. Okay. Every, did you, did you know about this? This is a new rule. I'm looking at it. It's called the ghost runner. It's called the ghost runner. All right. And so they start off the inning. You get a free base runner on second base. And you know who that runner is? It's the person who made the last out in the previous inning. Okay. So, or the last at bat person. So, so it's an attempt to speed the game up and, and to, to, to put more action in the sport.

• 40:26Gary O'Reilly?

  So Neil, is there an ultimate wrestling move? I mean, so if we're watching the Olympics and the wrestling comes on, we've got to be thinking, do this. And then we can all shout at the TV and encourage.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. I would say.

• 40:38Charles Liu?

  Now, before you answer that question, before you answer that question, Neil, uh, I recall you telling me some years ago about a move that you did in high school, which was essentially undefeatable. There was no defense against it. It was like the crane technique in the karate kid. So maybe that, you want to bring that up.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The crane, the karate kid crane.

• 40:59Charles Liu?

  I just remember you telling me this, this method where, where you were able to immobilize your opponents against which they had no defense.

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow. Uh, I'm trying to remember what that might've been because I had, I had a few moves where if I can get that grip, then that's the end. If, so the challenge is can you execute the grip before you then complete the move? Because the grip immobilizes your opponent in such a way. Now you can do with them what you wish. And if you're, if you're quick enough and you get them slightly off balance, you take them to the mat and the takedown move is, is included. The, the pin is part of the takedown move. And so, but I, I can tell you this, people are very nimble and they're very strong and they're very, so you don't tend to see that.

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But here's a move where if you see it executed, basically the, the match is going to be over within five seconds. Okay. And it's called the cradle. I'd have to say, if I were voting, I'd, I'd be curious what fellow wrestlers, if they had a different vote on this, uh, from what I'm telling you here. The cradle is where one of my arms wraps, you're facing me. You're perpendicular to me on the mat. One of my arms is under your head, like I'm just cradling you, like you're cradling a baby, right? My other arm. Goes under the knee of either one of your legs. It doesn't matter. It it won't matter. And so now you're I bring that knee up to your chin. And then lock my arms.

• 42:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So now now I have you. I'm sorry. There's what are you gonna do? Where you gonna what are you way where you gonna go? And once I have that. If I can get that in any way, I just have to roll back.

• 42:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Roll back and you I'll roll your shoulder blades down to the mat. And then the the referees there watching it. And then I love this sound where they they slam the I'll do it on the table here. There it is. They slam and that's and that's it. And if you watch someone get into a cradle, the generally they're not coming out of it. And that's the end of the match. So you you just watch for that move. It's it's almost once once it's once you have the grip. It's you can't it's kind of over. Now you can try to kick out of it.

• 43:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. You can try to kick. Um, so you bring one other foot to to to scissor lock your two ankles and just try to kick out of it. But if I'm no, consider just to just to see what how how. How many muscles are involved in this? My entire chest. Okay, my deltoids, my biceps, all of my upper body strength. Is now has you enclosed in this cradle move. So it is one of the most effective invocations of muscle strength of any move there is. And and by the way, I haven't checked this year, but women's wrestling is rapidly growing in popularity in the United States.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know, this is such a sort of a male masculine testosterone thing that I was initially skeptical. I say, we really is this gonna work? And then I watched some matches like, oh, my gosh, bring it on. Bring it on. And so it was it was really I was delighted to see it. Very important thing about wrestling. And now that it's, you know, it's got, uh, can I say this? Both genders, right? It's got the the full gender spectrum is represented. The the what's true also about wrestling is that it's you do it in different weight categories.

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so no matter your weight, there's a category you can compete in. And it's not, "Well, I've never been tall enough to do this, and I'm not strong enough to do that." In wrestling, you are matched up pound for pound.

• 44:55Charles Liu?

  Yeah, and that actually is a point that leads perfectly the question I have for you, Neil, about that. And that is, how much weight makes a difference? In other words, the weight classes, if you're like at the bottom of a weight class compared to the top-

• 45:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh no, you always want the top of the weight class.

• 45:11Charles Liu?

  You want the top of the weight class at all times. What is the difference? I mean, one of these days, I'll tell you about the one time that I had glory on the wrestling mat back in high school. But that's a different story. I was underweight the other guy by at least 25 pounds. And I still wiped the floor with him. But the question becomes-

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Charles, that's the first time I've ever heard you use the phrase, "I wiped the floor with him." This is like the last sentence I ever thought would ever come out of your mouth.

• 45:42Charles Liu?

  We're obviously a bad influence on Charles. I didn't taunt the dude, but it's true. But that's a story for another time. But my point is, like, how much does it matter? Can an excellent technique defeat a heavier opponent?

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not likely. Here's my point. If you weigh less, you can defeat someone heavier than you if they're not as good a wrestler. But if they're just as good as a wrestler as you, you will simply lose.

• 46:12Charles Liu?

  Wow.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so here's my point. Generally, as you get bigger, you get slower, okay? One advantage I had was I had very fast reflexes and had very long arms. So I would use moves that would exploit those two facts, okay? But I was always taller than my opponent, alright? But we're exactly the same weight. Well, if we are the same weight, and I'm taller, and neither of us have body fat- My opponent is stronger than I am. That is, that is the definition of muscle strength. Okay. The cross-sectional area of your muscle directly correlates with your strength. So if you are shorter, your muscles are bigger than mine because we weigh the same.

• 46:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to know that in advance to maneuver around their strong points to do things that might be quicker than they are, or overreach, or be able to reach farther than they can. So that's an important fact. So I would claim, Charles, that the person who's 25 pounds heavier than you was simply not as talented as you. Because if he were, he'd be stronger than you in every way and have all of your moves and there'd be nothing you could do on him.

• 47:19Charles Liu?

  I see.

• 47:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying. And if you want someone smaller to kick someone's head, they'll execute some different kind of rules that are not the rules that the heavier person is a participant in. So if you're good at like Taekwondo and you can, and you half the weight of the other person, you go kick him in the throat. Okay. Yeah, that's a David and Goliath scenario. Right? But I bet you if Goliath had a sling, the way David had a sling, Goliath would have taken out David. Okay. So we're not talking about lightweight talent versus heavyweight no talent here. We're talking about everybody with talent.

• 47:57Charles Liu?

  Okay. So, so weight is the defining difference, given equal talent?

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, guys, great to have you here. Charles, Liu, always great to have you on StarTalk. Thanks for being such a friend of the show. We got to call it quits there. This has been StarTalk, Sports Edition, the Olympics. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, bidding you to keep looking up.