Weight plays a huge roll in almost every sport played. From every Olympic sport to the NFL, weight keeps the playing field level. In the Olympics, weightlifters are divided into 8 weight classes according to their body mass. The weights they lift during competition must be within a few grams or the athlete will get disqualified.
An NFL official football must weigh between 410-450 grams. The baseball that is chucked by your favorite pitcher every spring must weigh not less than 5 ounces and not more than 5.25 ounces. This list could go on forever and just goes to show how much of a roll weight plays in sports.
How do we know those weights are accurate and that we're not getting cheated? There are of course multiple check and balances along the way, but we're going to jump right to the beginning of the process. The International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK) is the base mass used to determine the accuracy of all weights used in the world. The IPK is only 39 mm in diameter and height, yet has it's very own vault for a home that can only be accessed with 3 keys. The story of the IPK is a lengthy one so that will have to wait for another blog.
One random factoid I ran across is the definition of a meter. A meter is the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. Very interesting!
~Tebrev
No comments:
Post a Comment