I enjoy watching the pole-vaulters at the Olympics, especially Daly Thompson. Co…

I enjoy watching the pole-vaulters at the Olympics, especially Daly Thompson. Could you explain the physics of the pole vault for me? — ZG, Bullcreek, West Australia

The pole vault is all about energy and energy storage. Lifting a person upward takes energy because there is an energy associated with altitude—gravitational potential energy. Lifting a person 5 or 6 meters upward takes a considerable amount of energy and that energy has to come from somewhere. In the case of a pole-vaulter, most of the lifting energy comes from the pole. But the pole also had to get the energy from somewhere and that somewhere is the vaulter himself. Here is the story as it unfolds:

When the pole-vaulter stands ready to begin his jump, he is motionless on the ground and he has no kinetic energy (energy of motion), minimal gravitational potential energy (energy of height), and no elastic energy in his pole. All he has is chemical potential energy in his body, energy that he got by eating food. Now he begins to run down the path toward the jump. As he does so, he converts chemical potential energy into kinetic energy. By the time he plants his pole at the jump, his kinetic energy is quite large.

But once he plants the pole, the pole begins to bend. As it does, he slows down and his kinetic energy is partially transferred to the pole, where it becomes elastic potential energy. The pole then begins to lift the vaulter upward, returning its stored energy to him as gravitational potential energy. By the time the vaulter clears the bar, 5 or 6 meters above the ground, almost all of the energy in the situation is in the form of gravitational potential energy. The vaulter has only just enough kinetic energy to carry him past the bar before he falls. On his way down, his gravitational potential energy becomes kinetic energy and he hits the pit at high speed. The pit’s padding extracts his kinetic energy from him gently and converts that energy into thermal energy. This thermal energy then floats off into the air as heat.

One interesting point about jumping technique involves body shape. The vaulter bends his body as he passes over the bar so that his average height (his center of gravity) never actually gets above the bar. Since his gravitational potential energy depends on his average height, rather than the height of his highest part, this technique allows him to use less overall energy to clear the bar.

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