Playing with Science Time Capsule Season 1 & 2

Check out the best of Playing with Science as chosen by StarTalk fans when hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore the science behind basketball, surfing, martial arts, hockey and more featuring guests Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lance Armstrong, and others. Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on: TuneIn: tunein.com/playingwithscience Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360 GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/playing-with-science-time-capsule-season-1-and-2/ Photo credits, clockwise from top left: Erik Aeder/Courtesy of www.paigealms(dot)com; Ben Ratner; Ben Ratner; Amaury Sport Organisation (A. S. O.); Ben Ratner; NY Riveters.

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

• 0:26Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:27Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:28Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science.

• 0:34Chuck Nice?

  This week, we bring you a special episode. That's right, we sent out a survey and asked you to vote for your favorite episodes of 2017. And we've compiled moments from the winning picks into this special time capsule episode smashup. Let's start off with our favorite episode of 2017, Fight Like a Physicist. In this one, our good friend, physics professor Eric Goff of Lynchburg College, breaks down the science behind Krav Maga and teaches us how to throw a mean punch according to physics. Check it out.

• 1:07Gary O'Reilly?

  We are talking martial arts and the physics therein. And joining us now is our very good friend, Professor Eric Goff. Not just a man with a plan, but a man with a book coming out next year, that'll be 2018. The Science Behind Krav Maga, which if I'm not mistaken, Professor, is the hand-to-hand martial arts of the Israeli military, is it not?

• 1:30Speaker 02

  That's right. The Israeli Defense Forces employ this, and it's becoming a much more popular sport here in the US. You're seeing a lot of billboards going up for Krav Maga instruction these days.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  Well, what is it? I mean, it sounds like, I gotta tell you, when you talk about the martial arts, you got some cool names out there, okay? You got your judo, all right?

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Your aikido.

• 1:53Chuck Nice?

  Your aikido, okay, that sounds cool. Your jujitsu, which sounds very dangerous. Even karate, which is like, oh, I know what I'm getting into. But then you say Krav Maga, and it sounds like...

• 2:08Gary O'Reilly?

  You're gonna think, you're thinking... Food again, aren't you?

• 2:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm like Krav Maga, mm, delicious. Ah, you know what? I had the best Krav Maga the other night, I gotta tell you. It was unbelievable. I'm telling you, the outside was crispy, the inside was tender, it was the best Krav Maga I've ever had.

• 2:27Gary O'Reilly?

  My stomach's already rumbling, behave yourself.

• 2:29Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so what is Krav Maga?

• 2:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Firstly, Professor, welcome back to Playing with Science. Um, and please put this man in his place, thank you.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Well, well, if Chuck had had good Krav Maga the other night, his face would look a lot different, I think.

• 2:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  Alright, Professor.

• 2:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Scores in.

• 2:46Chuck Nice?

  Way to go, nicely done, my friend.

• 2:49Gary O'Reilly?

  So, is it, is it kicks, flicks, all the sort of flashy stuff? Or is this more hand-to-hand, let's sort of like end up wrestling? Or is it a combination of a lot of different martial arts?

• 3:00Chuck Nice?

  Is it eye gouging and, and like rip your throat out stuff?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Uh, it, it's got some of that in there. Um, I, I've studied karate myself, I'm a first degree black belt. And I, I really enjoy karate, it's, but it, it has a lot of elegant katas and movements. But Krav Maga is a much more, uh, realistic fighting system. So, uh, I, I think I'd, I'd be more comfortable knowing a little bit more Krav Maga than karate if I were on a, a dark sidewalk somewhere and had to, to fight somebody.

• 3:29Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm guess, I'm guessing that the good professor never has an issue with pupils.

• 3:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 3:35Gary O'Reilly?

  When he's on a lecture.

• 3:36Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, I'm sure there's a great deal of discipline in the professor's class. So, so Krav Maga is, uh, basically a, a street fighting style then, huh? Or, or?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  It is, I mean, you, you've got some Aikido in there, you've got some boxing, wrestling, uh, some karate. I mean, you've got an amalgam of, of all kinds of different systems. And it, it's an ever-evolving system, it, it employs whatever works well and it changes techniques as, uh, new ways to perform them come along.

• 4:05Gary O'Reilly?

  So, you've worked on an article for the Ring Magazine on boxing?

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, we've looked at different, uh, punch techniques, we've looked at punch speeds. Um, if you do just kind of a standard jab-cross combination, uh, we also do this in Krav Maga. Uh, you can get speeds close to 20 miles an hour with these jabs and crosses.

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  And one thing to keep in mind when you're punching someone, if you extend your arm out straight. When your arm reaches its full straight extension, your fist is moving at zero miles an hour. If it wasn't, it would keep moving and your arm would stretch. So the maximum speed of your punch is gonna be about halfway into that extended arm.

• 4:52Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  So you-

• 4:54Chuck Nice?

  So is it better to be closer and hit somebody halfway through a punch than to hit them at the end of a punch?

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Your elbow's gonna be bent about ninety degrees or so when your fist is moving at its maximum speed. And then as the fist extends, your fist has, or the arm extends, the fist has to slow down to zero when you get to a fully extended arm. So you have this rising speed and then, you know, going back down when the arm is extended. So the most damage on the punch is gonna be when the elbow's bent.

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:27Gary O'Reilly?

  So when I look at the biomechanics of my shoulder, my elbow, my fist, if we're gonna call it that, my shoulder's not built for kind of rotating around the outside. It's more upwards, in a vertical upwards and downwards, and my elbow is a hinge. So how do we utilize the way we're constructed to the most effect if we are to throw punches?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Well, the most effective way is to not just use your arm and shoulder. You really wanna engage your core, this kinetic linking that we talk about where you're starting from the feet, you're gonna start rotating your body into the punch. So your entire torso's creating a rotation. So you've got a lot of stored energy that you're gonna convert to kinetic energy as through that rotation.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  So you really wanna be rotating your trunk so that, so that you are using, it's almost like a golf swing, huh?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Gary O'Reilly?

  The same with a throwing action, a golf swing.

• 6:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:25Gary O'Reilly?

  We're getting the same with the rotation for a kick in martial arts. The same thing applies, you're maximizing the energy, is that right, professor, by incorporating rotation?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  That's right, and when you have a, like for example, a side kick, you know, we also use side kicks, front kicks, back kicks in Krav Maga as well as karate. The idea is you're gonna cock your leg for a kick, so you're gonna store a bunch of energy like a spring in your leg when you've got your leg cocked, and then you release that energy as you're kicking. And you're gonna rotate your hips at the same time, so you're trying to get as much energy released during the kick or the punch as you can.

• 7:04Gary O'Reilly?

  When I spoken to boxers and to people who practice martial arts, they said, "Some guys punch harder than others, and it's not the big muscly guys that you'd think would have the hardest punches. Quite often, it's the little guys with not a lot of bulk, but they punch so hard." Is that down to rotation, or is it something else that they're employing?

• 7:26Speaker 02

  A lot of it's rotation. I mean, keep in mind, your kinetic energy grows like the square of your speed and only the first power of your mass, so if you can get a lot of extra speed going in that punch, somebody's gonna feel that a little bit more than kind of a lumbering, bigger mass fist coming at you.

• 7:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so really, it's more about the speed and the rotation than it is about, "Oh, I'm a big, strong guy."

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Sure, I mean, you really wanna get hit with that speed. I mean, when these punches are coming at you at 15 to 20 miles an hour when you're getting hit, you're gonna feel it.

• 8:03Gary O'Reilly?

  It is really interesting, when you look at it from the point of view of physics and martial arts, it's, uh, yeah, I have a friend, he's got an older guy, there's nothing of him, and he just turns around to me and says, "This guy can punch so hard, it's ridiculous."

• 8:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:20Gary O'Reilly?

  And you're looking at him thinking, "He couldn't punch his way out of a wet paper bag." Yeah, when the martial arts expert says, "This guy can punch," you're thinking, "Okay."

• 8:30Chuck Nice?

  Right. Up next, we brought on your personal astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, to discuss some of his many tweets about sports for an episode we called, "Out of This World Sports."

• 8:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Today, we enter Twitterdom through the vast multiverses of Neil deGrasse Tyson's mind and light up the cerebral spheres that engage with the complex and ever-evolving world of sport.

• 8:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so, uh, did you, did you change your meds?

• 9:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Slightly.

• 9:02Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Neil deGrasse Tyson has many opinions and many things which he chooses to share on a regular basis, but he has a heartfelt connection to sports that's constantly filtered through his scientific lens on Twitter.

• 9:17Gary O'Reilly?

  So, when you play with science, there can be no better playdate than the man himself.

• 9:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 9:23Gary O'Reilly?

  And to take us to sports that are out of this world.

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  Out of this world sports.

• 9:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, indeed, out of this world sports, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes, thanks for joining us right now. It's the one.

• 9:34Gary O'Reilly?

  The only.

• 9:35Chuck Nice?

  The inevitable Neil deGrasse Tyson. You like that?

• 9:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Scared?

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where'd you get the gong? My gosh. Normally, that's how you get someone off the stage, right? I saw the gong show.

• 9:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Alrighty, no, no, don't take it personally.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  No, that is, uh, that is a royal entrance right there. That's what the gong is for.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, normally, I'm sitting there.

• 10:04Chuck Nice?

  That's right, sir.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you just took, you just took your own damn show. Now, I'm a guest on your damn show.

• 10:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Weirding you out? Are you comfortable? You okay?

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll get, I'll get used to it. That's all right.

• 10:16Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't happen without you, no matter what, though. What's up?

• 10:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Neil's gonna start asking us questions. You won't be able to help him, sir.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, I, I'll be, I'll happily be your guest on this show.

• 10:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's when, please don't ask us any questions.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It means I feel loved. I feel loved, yeah.

• 10:29Chuck Nice?

  That's very cool. Thanks for being here, man. We appreciate it. And of course, you are a prolific tweeter.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but it's not, uh, well, so a couple of things. First, you said I have many opinions, which I do, but I hardly ever tweet opinions.

• 10:41Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the most opinionated tweet I ever posted, which was clearly an opinion, was after Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I said, "BB-8 is way cuter than R2-D2." That was clearly an opinion.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  That's an opinion.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and of course, there were fights and things.

• 10:57Chuck Nice?

  You kidding me? Yeah.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was generational fights.

• 10:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what I try to is not give you an opinion because frankly, I don't care if you share my opinion on anything.

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I care is that whatever opinion you come up with,

• 11:09Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  it is informed with objectively verifiable truths.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  Nice. See, there you go. This man is always about science education, right down to the tweets.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then make whatever old damn opinion you want.

• 11:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't care, but, I mean, I care broadly, but specifically person to person.

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, I'll give you more information that you may have had before.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To help you understand your decisions, that's all.

• 11:34Chuck Nice?

  So, what we're talking about today are the tweets of Niels with respect to sports, which is...

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You called all my sports tweets?

• 11:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did, my friend.

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's not, I mean, there's a few, but it's not like that's what I do, right?

• 11:46Chuck Nice?

  No, but there's, there's, there's more than forty of them.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forty, okay, out of five thousand. Okay, so there's, one in a hundred is a sports tweet.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  One in a hundred is a sports tweet, you know, and a lot of times they surround very significant sporting events.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, just to keep it in the mood.

• 12:03Chuck Nice?

  Right, so it's like the Super Bowl or the Olympics.

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it does.

• 12:07Gary O'Reilly?

  You think it's one in a hundred?

• 12:08Chuck Nice?

  And you are an athlete, you know, I mean...

• 12:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forty pounds ago, yes.

• 12:14Gary O'Reilly?

  I think we've established we're all, everyone here is an ex-athlete.

• 12:20Chuck Nice?

  So, you know, I'm sure that, you know, you're a person who looks at, so as a former athlete, you were a wrestler.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just can I tell you, since we're like three guys here.

• 12:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know where my, how I wear my forty pounds. So, a lot of it is everywhere, but of course, we're guys, so most of it just goes to the belly.

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I've always had broad shoulders and a large chest, and my chest, even at my chubbiest, was always bigger than my waist. So, all you have to do is cut a jacket, a sport coat, to come in at the waist a little bit.

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it still cuts and you don't look like some slob that, you know, that clearly was once in shape but is no longer.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I've been able to fake this extra weight in my, in my...

• 13:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Next week on Playing with Science, we'll have colours for spring and, as well as tailoring and other ideas.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Haberdashural advice from Playing with Science.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is from the 2012 Olympics.

• 13:15Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, "How about a Mars Olympics? Yes, all athletes would suffocate. Ignoring that complication, way cooler than an Earth Olympics, that's all."

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  Way cooler than an Earth Olympics?

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm setting you up for tweets that follow.

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I was gonna say, cause when you say way cooler, then you actually give us some examples of why an Olympics on Mars, or pretty much any sporting event on Mars, might be cool.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's also a couple hundred degrees below zero on Mars, so way cooler has double meaning there. Yeah, no, I think we picked that one up. You picked that up, okay.

• 13:46Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so let's look at one of the Mars tweets, and this is cycling on Mars.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so go ahead.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, uh, this is again during the, the summer 2012 Olympics. "If there was cycling on Mars, try Olympic Mons, a volcanic mountain five times taller than Mont Blanc in the Alps."

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you think you got tall mountains here? No, the tallest mountains and the deepest valleys are not on Earth, in the solar system. They're, they're on Mars, they're on the moon, so we ain't got no, we...

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  It's not the right...

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we're not, we're not winning those contests. Cause you know this, the atmosphere on Mars is how much less than the Earth's atmosphere? It's about one one-hundredth. Excellent. Yeah. So if we had that... Pressure, atmospheric pressure. So in other words, for every breath you take on Mars, there's one one-hundredth the amount of air in that breath, and it would be on Earth. As an athlete, altitude becomes your enemy, in terms of the oxygenation. If you're performing in altitude, but the ideal way to do this is you train in altitude, and then compete at sea level.

• 14:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What we need to do is go to Mars...

• 14:54Chuck Nice?

  That's why serpas don't have any problem getting up the mountain while all the tourists are like...

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. All the baggage.

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  Right, I need more oxygen.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what you do, even better. You go train on Mars. I'm gonna make a suggestion that's never been made before, you ready? Yeah, here we are. You drain the Pacific Ocean.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh. And then hold the Olympics at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. But you train at high altitude, but now you compete at the bottom of it, which is six miles down. Now every breath of air has way more oxygen than at sea level. And so now you have heroic feats before you don't even have to dope your blood. The air itself will put the oxygen and force it right into your lungs.

• 15:35Chuck Nice?

  I'm sure the IOC are gonna stump up for that draining of the. I was gonna say, I just like the fact that you're thinking like a supervillain. I'd have gone the other way and said, let's all go train on Mars. On the, on the mountain.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the Olympic Mons.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  And come back to Earth and compete.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Problem is, it's only forty percent the gravity of Earth. So you're, the weight that you are carrying is not as much going up the hill.

• 15:56Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:57Chuck Nice?

  Right, so there is some trade off.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some trade offs, that's the word.

• 16:00Chuck Nice?

  Some leaded suits.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, oh yeah, yeah, just led, led, led yourself down. Another thing, once you've drained the Pacific Ocean, that had nothing to do with sports, just while we're on the topic. If you drain the Pacific Ocean, that is the great toilet bowl of dead satellites.

• 16:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh yeah, because they always splat down in the Pacific.

• 16:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they crash down in the. If it's a dead satellite, they're not splashing.

• 16:21Chuck Nice?

  They're not splashing down, they're crashing down.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the reason why is the Pacific Ocean is almost a third of all possible longitudes on Earth.

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you de-orbit and you do it, you have a lot of latitude, no pun intended, to where you begin the de-orbit so that it's gonna plunk down in the Pacific no matter what. And, and people don't live there, so not over the great bulk of the expanse.

• 16:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a safe place to drop your stuff out of orbit. The day we de-orbit Hubble, it's going straight into the Pacific.

• 16:47Chuck Nice?

  Going into the Pacific Ocean.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's the size of a Greyhound bus, by the way, if you don't know.

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hubble telescope.

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Chuck Nice?

  Hey, time to take a short break. We'll be right back with our 2017 Time Capsule episode. Don't go away.

• 17:25Chuck Nice?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science on this Time Capsule episode. We're revisiting some of your favorite shows from this past season. Up next, you voted for the physics of the Tour de France. This show features Neil deGrasse Tyson's interview with the one and only Lance Armstrong. Check it out.

• 17:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Today on Playing with Science, we ride. So fill up your water bottle, get your lycra on. It is centuries old and said to be the most efficient means of transport known to humankind. Pretty simple, really. A wheel at each end, somewhere to sit, and something to steer with.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes, very simple, but not so simple because you know cycling is now one of the most sophisticated sports on the planet. And it's loaded, and I mean loaded, with lots of tech. But don't worry, you're not going to miss out on that. We have a whole nother show that's going to be devoted to the tech of cycling.

• 18:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh yeah, but for now, we'll be exploring the physics of the Tour de France, which is a test. Mais oui! It is a test of man's endurance, man's need for speed while not falling off. And with more twists and turns and devious strategies than an Agatha Christie novel.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  I see what you did there. Yeah, I like that. That's good, yeah. To explore this lesser-known world, we sent the intrepid Neil deGrasse Tyson to meet with what some might say is a controversial figure in the sport. We know him simply as Lance Armstrong.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From when you began riding to when you retired, did the aerodynamics of the sport change?

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Well, yes. I mean, the aerodynamics, absolutely.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's still your body.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  It's still your body, but the biggest thing that changed was in the late 80s, they invented a whole new type of handlebar, which changed, you know, in the late 80s or in the mid 80s, you would have been sitting out like this. They took, which originated in the triathlon, they took the idea of that and they said, well, what if we, and the guy who invented this is a guy named Boone Lennon, and he was an old ski racer, but he also rode bikes. And he worked for Scott, the ski manufacturer that make poles and skis. And he said, well, what if instead of, I mean, I wouldn't ski down the hill like this. What if, you know, a skier who's tucked like this, like what if we rode like that? So that, that So I just took everything

• 19:47Speaker 04

  Takes away the aerodynamic drag All this comes Of my arms outside Everything inside, everything inside your body Yeah, so you look, it was called the Scott bar And it looked like a downhill ski racer

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Out Posing like that, yeah, yeah Yeah, it was out a bit Yeah, which I've seen it, yeah So that revolutionized the aerodynamics of triathlon initially And then it moved into cycling, which was a harder transition Because they were so traditional They saw these bars and these guys, they said, "No way" "Ain't no way I'm riding that" Well, it proved so much faster that Actually Greg LeMans was the first one He won the Tour de France in 1989 on these new aero bars That's what it takes I mean, that was the tipping point for that bar So then when did the cone head helmets come out? Those, those were around for a long time Yeah, those were around before the bars Okay And then came, and then, you know, people tried to Make an aerodynamic frame, I mean, I remember in the Yeah, the tubes became these, you know

• 20:43Speaker 04

  They're very, they're oval shaped Yeah, yeah You can even go back Almost like the airfoil of a plane A British guy, when the UCI, when the governing body Was a little more lax on the double triangle thing A British guy in 1996 by the name of Chris Boardman Set the hour record, which is on the track I love the hour record Which is like the ultimate test I love that I mean, you're indoors, there's no wind, there's no draught It's like the ultimate, so he said And the track is banked, so you just It's banked at 30 degrees There's nothing against you Right, so he said, he broke the hour record On a bike, it's called a Lotus bike It was not a double triangle You can look it up, I mean, we can go to the lab It was a very, this is, to me, if the sport said, "Okay, you guys evolve" Technology-wise, "Do whatever you want"

• 21:28Speaker 04

  That's what the sport would look like You'd have that, that's what a bike frame would look like But The Lotus frame The Lotus frame, which you, your audience will see it We'll get a picture of it So, but then they backed off that and went back to the double triangle But you'll see how radical it looks So And obviously he went, I mean, nobody's ever What's your best hour? I've never done that You haven't done it, yeah? No Tell me that, you're lying I've had a lot of great hours in my life, but they weren't, they weren't They weren't on a velcro

• 22:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at that.

• 22:02Gary O'Reilly?

  He doesn't like the track inside, does he? Loves the road.

• 22:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 22:06Gary O'Reilly?

  It's interesting, Eric, that they borrowed from other sports. You listen to that first bit, the Scott Barr comes out of skiing. Lotus is a British car manufacturer. They had a Formula One race team. So cycling's been borrowing from all these different sports in an attempt to get that speed.

• 22:23Chuck Nice?

  Get faster.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And why not? We all follow the same laws of physics.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  So, uh, skiers facing the same kind of error that a cyclist is gonna face.

• 22:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  So we can learn a lot from other sports by seeing what technologies have advanced in other sports and applying them to cycling.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  So now, what, no, I was gonna say, what is the, um, what is the optimum way to increase airflow for a, for a biker? Aside from, you know, the tuck, which makes perfect sense. You ever see a downhill skier? They're, they're actually, not only are they tucked, but they're as low to the ground as possible. So what is the optimum means of increasing airflow for a bicyclist?

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Well, we learn about air resistance when we're children and we stick our hands out the car window. Uh, we get into airplane mode and the hand is, you know, sideways and we have a very little drag. And then we turn it 90 degrees and all of a sudden we're getting smacked by the air and the hand will fall back. So we know that-

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  Which, by the way, Eric, is why I only have one hand. But thanks for, thanks for bringing up my pain, sir. Thank you. No, go ahead, I'm joking.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  If you drive on the other side of the road in England, then you can lose the other hand.

• 23:37Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, Eric, don't encourage him. Please, just don't encourage him. Now, am I right when, and Chuck loves this term, skin friction? Is that the technical, the cyclist term for the, the problem that you face as, as a competitor?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  What you're trying to do is reduce the area. So when you get into that tucked position, you are reducing the amount of area that the air can hit.

• 24:01Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  So if you're going really slow, the air resistance might just be a couple of pounds on you.

• 24:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  If you're going really fast downhill, it could be fifteen, sixteen pounds. And remember, fifteen pounds is the weight of the bike. So you've got the weight of a bowling ball being pulled back behind you in the air resistance. So you can really feel it. It's really slowing you down.

• 24:24Gary O'Reilly?

  So as Neil said, if we get the Conehead helmets, then I get the super slippery Lycra bodysuit, I get really smart booties for my shoes.

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 24:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Reduce all of the wind. How much can I gain?

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Well, in the time trials, they're allowed to wear this very sleek clothing and aerodynamic equipment. They've got the back wheel is covered and you can reduce drag by about 20%. You've got the teardrop helmet.

• 24:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  You know, you get a cyclist like, I think of Tony Martin from Germany on the bike, who just absolutely, almost gets himself completely two-dimensional on that thing, the way he can compress his knees and his body. It's an amazing thing to see. But they could reduce, you know, by 20% or so the drag area that they feel.

• 25:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, one question, Eric. Why only the rear wheel is covered and the front wheel has the spokes or whichever system is preferred?

• 25:24Speaker 02

  So when the air is coming around the object, think of the water going around a boat, you have a wake in the back.

• 25:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  And that wake is taking away some energy that you have. So when you close off that back wheel and you have the teardrop shape, you're allowing the air to flow a little farther back and the wake's not quite as chaotic. You don't have quite as many swirls. You don't lose quite as much energy.

• 25:48Chuck Nice?

  Just to clarify, what you're saying is, behind the bike, what happens is, the air turbulence creates like a curl. And so that curl, that curl of turbulence happens much farther behind the bike itself. Freeing the bike to move faster, right?

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, i- i- if you just have a round object and you got air flowing behind it, you can get all these swirls behind it.

• 26:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  In the air, and that's taking energy away from the, from the ball, let's say. But if you can teardrop the, the object, the air will flow much smoother behind it and you don't have quite as many swirls. So there's less drag on the object.

• 26:23Chuck Nice?

  Wow. And now what, what are the speeds? Have we got to a place where we're, we're kind of reaching an optimum speed? What are the kind of speeds that we're talking about when we look at these aerodynamic advancements?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Well, you go back, um, a couple of years in the first stage, uh, you had Rohan Dennis setting a time trial record. Now, this was only about eight and a half miles, but the guy averaged. Yeah, only, I say only, yes. The, the guy averaged about thirty-five miles an hour on the bike.

• 26:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  I mean, that was an incredible speed. We're talking over fifty-five kilometers an hour. Um, sustain that for.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  Ticket. Yeah, that's ma- that's, that's in- that's insane. Wow.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:04Chuck Nice?

  Super cool.

• 27:06Chuck Nice?

  In this next episode, NASA oceanographer Bill Patzert breaks down the science of surfing the big waves. Check it out.

• 27:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Today we head for the beach and we are so amped. We may shoot the curl, we might have to bail. We will probably get mullered, and if you understand any of that, you then are no Barney.

• 27:29Chuck Nice?

  Dude, total poser, dude. And helping us stay away from the gnarly stuff and steer us to the serious science of the big waves is Bill Patzert, oceanographer at NASA and of course, super cool surfer from California. Then we go all pro with professional surfer and big wave champion Paige Alms, who is based in Maui.

• 27:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Chuck Nice?

  I don't like her already.

• 27:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Isn't that cool? Right. There are few sights in sport that are as awesome as seeing a surfer take on the big waves, make that huge descent and then emerge through the barrel. It is breathtaking and possibly the most fun you can. have with physics and when I say awesome I don't mean it in that cliched way I actually really mean it is awesome

• 28:19Chuck Nice?

  yeah it is it's a beautiful thing to behold to watch somebody drop in and ride a wave and shoot the curl and come out at the end of that barrel and stand up it really looks like a human being triumphing over the entire ocean take that mother nature

• 28:37Gary O'Reilly?

  albeit temporarily because we don't like to upset her

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  that's for sure

• 28:40Gary O'Reilly?

  she does have a temper

• 28:41Chuck Nice?

  mm-hmm

• 28:42Gary O'Reilly?

  all right let's get up to our first guest shall we Bill Patzert absolutely yes research scientist and oceanographer at NASA

• 28:51Chuck Nice?

  and a former surfer oh I don't know should I say former Bill welcome to the show and do you still surf my friend

• 28:59Speaker 05

  okay aloha dudes uh

• 29:01Gary O'Reilly?

  aloha

• 29:02Speaker 05

  I could have been I should have been a contender but I spent too much time in the classroom got my PhD but I've been surfing now for over 50 years

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  way

• 29:14Speaker 05

  lot of surfing

• 29:15Gary O'Reilly?

  take a bow sir that's fabulous

• 29:17Chuck Nice?

  that is amazing

• 29:18Gary O'Reilly?

  so that's a lifelong surfing career really you seem to have an unique approach on the sport of surfing being an oceanographer has it been an advantage to have this I'll call it inside knowledge of the oceans as regards to getting the best out of your surfing

• 29:37Speaker 05

  well you know the answer to that of course is yes and no you know it's one thing to know the physics but it's another thing to be a great surfer all world-class athletes either you have it or you don't and I definitely did not have it all right

• 29:54Gary O'Reilly?

  all right modesty is we appreciate some modesty

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  yeah uh let me ask you this switching gears just a little bit back to you being a surfer what makes a good wave

• 30:06Speaker 05

  well you know these great storms they generate waves of many wavelengths from you know a few inches or a few centimeters up to waves that have three to 400 feet of wavelength now the interesting thing about waves is that depending on the wavelength the length between the peaks and a big swell The longer wavelengths travel faster. And so the first waves to arrive from a giant storm are usually these very smooth, long-period waves. Right. The precursors. And of course, these are the waves that surfers love.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  You get essentially anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five seconds between the peaks. And if the storm is large enough, these great swells can generate waves anywhere between ten, twenty-five, thirty, even forty-foot waves. And of course, the real surfers, the guys and the gals that live the sport, these are the waves they love. They're smooth. Mm-hmm. Have one large wavelength. But that is interesting, that waves, the longer waves, travel faster. And so usually, they're the first to arrive, followed the next day usually by what we

• 31:34Speaker 05

  call storm surf, which is a mixed surf of all different wavelengths. Yeah.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:41Speaker 05

  Many surfers call slop. Slop?

• 31:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 05

  And so what you want are these long-period waves that are the first arriving waves.

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 31:51Gary O'Reilly?

  So it's a small window of opportunity if it's only going to last a day or so?

• 31:55Speaker 05

  Yes, the, you know, the best waves are usually less than one day.

• 32:01Gary O'Reilly?

  And you're gonna, you could travel half of the way around the world or further, just for one day on the board?

• 32:07Speaker 05

  I've forecasted waves, these waves, of course, I call them great travelers. They travel across what we call great circles, which is the shortest distance.

• 32:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 32:17Speaker 05

  From one place to another. But I've seen great storms in the Indian Ocean, and more than a week later, they arrive on the coast of California. And so these are truly world travelers.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Hey, we've got to take another break, but we'll be back shortly with our time capsule episode of Playing with Science. Stay tuned.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  We're back with more Playing with Science. You're listening to a special time capsule episode. And keeping with the StarTalk tradition, we sent out a survey to our fans asking you to select your favorite episodes. And the results are in. Let's now take a listen to Space Jam. In this episode, your personal astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, answers your questions about basketball.

• 33:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Today, we throw ourselves deep into the cosmos and plot a course for the superstars of a faraway galaxy known by those who search such stars as the NBA Nebula.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, I like what you did there, Gary. Yeah, that was a like, that was a really cosmological NBA reference thing. Well, guess what? We're armed only with our enduring minds and our listeners' fabulously creative questions, because we're going to trek towards those faraway stars. And our guide for this journey is none other than the one, the only, your very own personal astrophysicist, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you were getting low.

• 34:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Now, we've got the irony of the next line is not wasted. So let's not waste any time. Let's make some space jam, shall we?

• 34:22Chuck Nice?

  I don't know why, but just hearing you say, let's make some space jam.

• 34:25Gary O'Reilly?

  It's like the Great British Bake Off, only in space. But I think, Neil, the way I've introduced the show might be flawed.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, NBA Nebula, I love it. We have nebula, nebula cities across the cosmos, named for whatever they happen to look like. We have a crab nebula, the North American Nebula, the, we have the Eagle Nebula, they just look like.

• 34:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Whatever it looks like.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever it looks like, we call, we that. We call it as we see it.

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this, and I know this is a sports show.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As does any good umpire.

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  Right. Nice. I saw what you did there. I saw what you did there. Ah, my man, my man. Let me just ask you.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so no reason why they couldn't be an NBA nebula. It would have to look like a.

• 35:08Chuck Nice?

  Um, like LeBron James.

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A court or some, you know, the paint patterns on the court.

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  Or a basket.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A basket hoop.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  With a net.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know of any. Maybe I could reinterpret some, uh, that already exist and come back with

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  That'd be cool.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sort of a sports version of previously named nebulae.

• 35:23Chuck Nice?

  Spotify the universe. Let me ask you this about nebulae, because there are big giant clouds of space gas, right?

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nebula is like Latin for cloud.

• 35:32Chuck Nice?

  That's what it is, yeah. Big giant cloud of space gas. But since it's a cloud.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  Wouldn't they change shape over a period of time?

• 35:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just don't live long enough to watch that happen, okay?

• 35:45Chuck Nice?

  So the Eagle Nebula will remain the Eagle Nebula as long as I'm alive.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, it's huge. You're talking about something that's hundreds of times bigger than the solar system.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not going to just sort of move around, yeah, and be, be anything it wants in any given moment.

• 35:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you do see some changes deep down where stars are being born, this sort of thing. But overall, these structures have a certain permanency to them.

• 36:10Chuck Nice?

  Sweet. All right. And now, remember, this is a sports show, okay? So we're gonna get back to our sports. It is a science sports show. Yeah. Okay, and that was science, that was science, all right? So how are we gonna get to the sports? Because what we're doing today is we're taking.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have no idea what you're doing today.

• 36:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's right, you're a guest.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm a guest.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Normally, you're driving this bus.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I ain't driving this bus.

• 36:28Chuck Nice?

  You go to Ticket.

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The short bus.

• 36:30Chuck Nice?

  Apparently, that's when I'm driving it. We'll check Neil's ticket, yeah. They're like, wait a minute, who, who let that kid drive the bus?

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Drive the bus.

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh, yeah. All right. So today, what we're doing is we're answering your listener questions submitted about, uh, our Kareem Abdul-Jabbar show that, uh.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was fun. I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed that.

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  That aired on Nat Geo a little while ago, and so, uh, we only got to answer a couple of them the first time around. So we took the rest of them. We figured, hey, why not, uh, revisit this and dedicate a show and have your personal astrophysic. Come back and answer these questions.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let's do that.

• 37:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's do it.

• 37:05Chuck Nice?

  First one, go ahead, Gary.

• 37:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so this is from Ranjiv Rudra on Facebook.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, he's showing off.

• 37:11Gary O'Reilly?

  That was great. Look at you. You practiced.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's showing off. He's showing off.

• 37:15Chuck Nice?

  This is not cool because everyone knows that.

• 37:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He rolled his R. He, oh, man.

• 37:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Namaste.

• 37:20Chuck Nice?

  And everybody knows that I never, ever prepare. And so therefore I look stupid. And now I gotta start preparing because you just made me look dumb.

• 37:28Gary O'Reilly?

  No, you just gotta learn to roll your Rs. So namaste from New Delhi, which is obviously a very, very interesting place to be. Which planet in our solar system?

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is that called Delhi now?

• 37:39Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, no, no. India kinda got rebranded and they changed a whole load of names that were associated with.

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But New Delhi is still New Delhi.

• 37:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, New Delhi is New Delhi. Bombay became Mumbai.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mumbai, right.

• 37:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Calcutta became Kolkata.

• 37:53Chuck Nice?

  Kolkata?

• 37:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Madras.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  Kolkata.

• 37:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Kolkata.

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  Kolkata.

• 37:57Gary O'Reilly?

  No, Kolkata. So then, Madras.

• 38:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's American, Jack. We're saying Kolkata.

• 38:02Gary O'Reilly?

  You say whatever you wish, sir. Madras became Chennai. Right, that's enough of the geography and history.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but, but that happened in China as well. And when Peking became Beijing. But they didn't change Peking duck.

• 38:16Chuck Nice?

  To Beijing duck.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's still Peking duck.

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm pissed off at that.

• 38:21Chuck Nice?

  Why?

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know. Go change it, change it.

• 38:24Chuck Nice?

  Beijing duck doesn't seem like I would like.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's still Bombay gin. It's not Mumbai gin.

• 38:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Trade name.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:30Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go. So, right. Okay. Which planet in our solar system would be the best for having a game filled with super cool, high-flying dunks? This would mean greater hang time in the air. Take it away, sir.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, ooh. So we're talking about basketball here.

• 38:45Gary O'Reilly?

  We are all about the NBA and the superstars within it.

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The National Basketball Association.

• 38:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Correct.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so here's the thing. You don't want the gravity to be too low.

• 38:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you know what'll happen because these guys can jump, right?

• 39:01Chuck Nice?

  For sure.

• 39:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you want to talk about hang time? If the object has a low enough gravity, then you will jump and achieve escape velocity and just never come back. So that's the limit.

• 39:11Chuck Nice?

  By the way, that's the game I want to watch.

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody jumps.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Everybody jumps and just disappear. Next group, next group comes in. Next group comes in.

• 39:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody comes back.

• 39:21Gary O'Reilly?

  It's gonna cost an awful lot in uniforms.

• 39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so there's that limit. Then you don't want to limit, the other limit where it, the gravity's so heavy, your muscles can't get you off the ground at all, right? So, you, and we know what Earth is like.

• 39:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And i- i- is that a not, not, not enough acrobatics for this person from New Delhi?

• 39:42Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, Ranjib is possibly exploring the fact that what actually would happen.

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Would we, would we see?

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the moon is pretty good. Mars would be good too, but moon would be better. Okay, so here's what they are, just to remind you. Mars has about forty percent of Earth gravity.

• 39:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 40:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you're two hundred pounds on Mars, on Earth, you are forty percent, you'd be eighty pounds on Mars. So what that means is all your musculature, all the strength of those muscles that's accustomed to moving gracefully two hundred pounds, because you guys are all two hundred pounds at least, okay? Um, but now, I mean, in my day, they were like a hundred and sixty, seventy, eighty pounds. That's before the, you know.

• 40:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Everybody's working out.

• 40:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody's working out now.

• 40:23Gary O'Reilly?

  And doing weight training.

• 40:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, weight, weight training. So two hundred pounds is a good average weight if you want to think about it. So, think about the strength you have to move your own body gracefully. And now, at two hundred pounds, now you weigh eighty pounds. So now, you, you can jump much higher. Your hang time is much longer. And you're already acrobatic, now you could do a triple, um, pirouette dunk. Because your hang time allows it.

• 40:48Gary O'Reilly?

  So Earth men become supermen on Mars?

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth men become supermen on Mars, that's correct. Now, that's forty percent your weight. Now, you want, you get used to that, now this person writes in, "You Mars basketball players, I want, I wanted to see one more, one, one up on that."

• 41:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 41:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you go to the moon. So now if you're two hundred pounds on Earth, you'd be thirty-two pounds on the moon.

• 41:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Whoa.

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you'd be even lighter. And a little-known fact is that the, the, the, the body weight plus equipment of the astronauts on the moon, was like three hundred and fifty pounds. And there they were skipping like a naughty thing.

• 41:25Chuck Nice?

  Right, like they were little, little, little, um, after their little lambs, there we go.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if they're 350 pounds on the moon, they're like, they're like 50 pounds here, one sixth of that.

• 41:37Chuck Nice?

  But now, see, on the moon, when you would see the guys skipping along, as you said, with this 350 pounds worth of equipment on them, they looked a little more bouncy, so they went up and they came down slowly.

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's because, not only are they lighter, you fall slower.

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:52Chuck Nice?

  So you go up slower?

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so now we've got hang time. So there's where the hang time comes in, okay? So, so, you don't go up, you will come down as fast as you went up, is what I'm saying. But if you go up fast, you'll go that much higher, so here's the thing. So, so you could be, so depending on how high the basket is, if the basket is still 10 feet up, you gotta, everybody be waiting around.

• 42:15Chuck Nice?

  Waiting for you to come down.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come down. See, how long's a game gonna last? Yeah, it'll be longer, right, right. So, so what you really would have to do would be raise.

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Raise the basket.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Raise the basket.

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  And then you just have more high-flying stunts within a game.

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, and you can imagine, remember those few moves that I first saw Michael Jordan do, it surely has been done since then, where Michael Jordan was going with one hand, changed his mind.

• 42:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Changed hands, and flipped, came to the other side of the basket and put the ball in.

• 42:41Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you could do that, you could like change your mind four or five times. So, all of a sudden, you've introduced freestyling. Freestyle, yeah, exactly. There's enough time. Yeah. To do a freestyle shot.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Improv.

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe to be judges for how beautiful the shot was.

• 42:56Chuck Nice?

  I like it.

• 42:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay.

• 42:57Chuck Nice?

  Improv B-ball.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 42:59Chuck Nice?

  Make it up new sports that will never, ever happen.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You come down on the left side, I come down on the right side, and I pass to you, you pass back to me, I throw it behind my back, someone shows up behind me, it goes down, back up, because what you've effectively done is added a third dimension to the maneuverings of the ball. So what would we call, so we have the Harlem Globetrotters here, what are we gonna call ourselves on the moon? Ooh.

• 43:24Chuck Nice?

  We're closing out our 2017 time capsule with hockey, AKA physics on ice. In this episode, physicist Dr. Alan Hachey breaks down the science behind hockey's signature move, the slapshot.

• 43:38Gary O'Reilly?

  This is playing with science. Yes, it's high time. We got our skates on, grabbed our pads and took to the ice and found out why hockey probably has more science in it than any other sport on earth, period.

• 43:53Chuck Nice?

  Period.

• 43:53Gary O'Reilly?

  So let's begin by taking a look at hockey's signature move, the slapshot.

• 43:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Gary O'Reilly?

  One of the fastest, most powerful shots there is. If you like, call it the slam dunk of hockey.

• 44:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and you know, we have a clip that we'd like to show right now. And then after that, we're going to bring in our physicist, Alan Hachey. And the reason why we picked this clip, it's a former hockey player, retired now, but his name is Al Iafredi. And for many years, he was with the Washington Capitals. And this particular play represents the slapshot at its best because it's a breakaway play where Iafredi receives the feed and he's all alone, almost like it's a penalty shot. And you see him just skating as hard as he can. And the thing that's funny is that whenever you see a breakaway play in any sport, and

• 44:48Chuck Nice?

  you know, as a former professional soccer player, right?

• 44:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  The guy gets alone and it's one on one with the goal.

• 44:54Gary O'Reilly?

  But then now there's a whole other thing going off because it's not on the ice anymore. It's between his ears.

• 44:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:58Gary O'Reilly?

  The whole mentality, if I've done this much, I've got to finish the play.

• 45:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:03Gary O'Reilly?

  But am I right? This is the fastest recorded slapshot in NHL history?

• 45:08Chuck Nice?

  Well, he held the record for 16 years for the fastest recorded slapshot in history. And he's also known for having one of the fastest and hardest slapshots in NHL history.

• 45:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Chuck Nice?

  And on this particular play, he is just haul assing down the ice. He's by himself, isolated, one on one with the goalie. Now, a lot of guys at that point, you would see them kind of finesse the shot. They might go left, right and backhand. They might do a little wrist flip. But what he does. He rears back and pow, just slaps one and I mean, the goalie never knows what happens.

• 45:45Gary O'Reilly?

  This must be Al's dream.

• 45:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's come to fruition. So let's, let's watch this. Let's see how this pans out.

• 45:52Speaker 06

  Oh baby. Comes to Cavallini, lead pass for Iafridi. He's got a breakaway and Iafridi scores and the Cats lead 3-1. Not too many guys are gonna take a slapshot on a breakaway, but we talked about Al's cannon that he has.

• 46:08Chuck Nice?

  There you go. You even hear the announcer say, "Not too many guys are gonna take a slapshot on a breakaway, but you see the cannon that Iafridi has."

• 46:18Gary O'Reilly?

  It is. It's, I mean, this thing's traveling at more than 100 miles an hour.

• 46:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 46:23Gary O'Reilly?

  I do that in my car.

• 46:25Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what?

• 46:26Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm in charge of a lethal weapon.

• 46:27Chuck Nice?

  I never even thought about it like that. It's like driving a tiny little black car 100 miles an hour on ice into a net.

• 46:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright.

• 46:35Chuck Nice?

  That's insane.

• 46:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright, so Chuck's driving down the ice in his little slick mobile, but there's some serious physics, some serious science behind what we just witnessed. And to help us break it down is Professor of Physics Alan Hesey from the University of Moncton in Canada. Not just a professor, but an author too. Author of Slapshot Science as well as the Physics of Hockey.

• 47:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 47:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Alan, welcome to the show. Now, you've seen the clip, you've heard how Chuck feels about it. Firstly, are you a hockey player yourself? And then we'll go from there about what you felt you saw going through that whole show.

• 47:14Chuck Nice?

  And before you answer, I'm gonna, let me, let me answer for you. I'm just wanna see if I'm right. So, were you born in Canada?

• 47:20Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 47:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay. And you have lived there your whole life?

• 47:23Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 47:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Then I am going to say that you are a hockey player. Otherwise, they would have murdered you by now.

• 47:31Speaker 07

  You guessed right.

• 47:34Gary O'Reilly?

  You went below hanging fruit, didn't you? All right, Alan, so what is happening in terms of the physics and science through that whole process?

• 47:44Speaker 07

  Yeah, so it's a bit like you have a rotating body, you have the upper body that is rotating and it's transferring that energy to the puck. So you have what they call kinetic energy of the upper body that is rotating and you have an indirect collision, actually. That's a very important point because, let's say you look at golf, you have the club hitting the ball directly and when you have that situation, you have the ball leaving at up to twice the speed of the club. You never exceed that speed limit, no matter what the golf manufacturer, the golf balls manufacturers will tell you.

• 48:25Speaker 07

  The physical absolute limits of the speed of the ball will be twice the velocity of the club head. And you would also get the same thing in hockey. And that would be very hard to get hundreds of miles, a hundred miles per hour. Instead, what happens is they hit the ice before and they load the stick with a lot more energy that would be normally transferred to the puck. So that way you can reach higher speed.

• 48:55Chuck Nice?

  Well, this concludes our 2017 Time Capsule episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for tuning in. Join us next time for a new season of Playing with Science. And remember, when you play with fire, you get burned. When you play with science, you get learned. Until then, I've been your host Chuck Nice. We'll see you next time with Gary O'Reilly.