Tuesday 1 January 2013

The Physics Behind The Slam Dunk

The Physics Behind The Slam Dunk




The slam dunk is a play in basketball where the shooter takes the ball and instead of shooting from a distance, the shooter gets within one jump away from the rim and throws the ball directly through the rim. In the early 1940's the slam dunk was just making its way into the NBA (National Basketball Association), but instead of being a common and exciting play, it was used as a way to disrespect your opponents and often lead to a very physical game. Things began to change though as more athletes realized how much the fans liked the slam dunk, and it became more common.

There are three types of dunks, there is the basic slam dunk ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doIUo12kdGg ), the alley oop, which is when one player passes the ball to another player who is jumping and performs the catch and slam dunk while in air ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wdYk_thUEM ), and finally the standing dunk, which is when a player jumps straight up and performs a slam dunk ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMlQXOd2u_0 ).

With each slam dunk there is conservation of energy happening and there is a conversion of the kinetic energy the shooter has once he is leaving the ground and it is turned into gravity potential energy. Which means that applying the concepts learned in PMPM and  COEM, it is possible to figure out the speed I would need to perform the famous free throw line slam dunk ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD54eF2XKJA ).  





The 4.2 m/s is in the vertical component of the triangle because the energy bar graphs are analysing the vertical component of the system.

We are able to set Ek1 and Eg2 equal to each other because the speed of the jumper will be converted into gravity potential, and the total energy does not change.

The height used is 0.9 meters because that is the required height I would need to jump, I got this by taking the height i needed to get to and subtracting my height and vertical reach.

The horizontal component of the triangle gives us the speed I would need to be running at because, once I jump the horizontal component of my jump will be in constant velocity.


3 comments:

  1. This is what I heard the other day when I was leaving my gym.

    Two girls were chilling near the basketball court at the back of my gym complex. They were watching a 3-on-3 game which abruptly ended when the biggest guy decided to jump straight up, knock the defender flat on his ass and dunk on him while he was laying sprawled on the blacktop.

    That's when the blonde cheekily whispered this confession to her smoking-hot Asian friend in pink sweatpants:

    "Nothing's hotter than a guy who can dunk."

    And can you guess what the Asian hottie replied? She whimpered:

    "Uh huhhh!"

    This got me thinking. I mean, for as long as I can remember I've always wanted to dunk. It's been a lifelong dream of mine, but I really had no idea girls found it hot. I guess it makes sense though since most people have this belief you need to be the most athletic dude around to be able to jump that high.

    But the fact is that's just not true anymore.

    Breakthrough research has surfaced recently about the exact 'levers' which allow people to jump ridiculously high. So naturally, 2 genius basketball players took this research and used it to transform regular guys who can't even touch the rim into dudes who can dunk with 2 hands every time and with ease.

    One of these geniuses is a pro basketball player and the other is the world's highest dunker (I think it's safe to say they know what they're doing LOL) They're getting a ton of media hype these days and blowing up on Youtube so I thought I'd let you know about them.

    And it's great timing too since they've just released all their crazy vert jump body hacks and techniques. They've been teaching people this stuff in secret for years but now it's available to the public in a badass program.

    > Here's the link to it: <

    It's pretty crazy stuff so check it out.

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