Chemical Education Today
Reports from Other Journals
News from Online: The Chemistry of Sports by Janice Hall Tomasik
The theme for National Chemistry Week 2008 is “Having a Ball with Chemistry” in honor of the Olympic Games. In keeping with this topic, let’s see how many online resources we can score about the chemistry of sports. For a general overview, a great place to start is an article in this Journal, Modern Sport and Chemistry: What a Chemically Aware Sports Fanatic Should Know (1), which describes the impact of chemistry on sports, including its use in creating specialized materials in sports equipment as well as the chemical compounds used in sports medicine. The authors encourage teachers to incorporate sports topics into chemistry courses as a way to motivate students. Chemistry and Sports Equipment It’s amazing the impact that chemistry has made for improving various sports equipment. For example, take a look at a game of tennis. As described in an article in SmallTimes (2), some tennis balls are coated with a nanolayer of clay to keep air from escaping. This helps the balls to retain their original air pressure, so they stay “bouncy” and can be used longer. The article also describes how nanotubes are used in modern tennis rackets to improve the stiffness and weight of the frame. You can see an example product at the Wilson Sporting Goods Web site (3). Now let’s drive on to golf. Did you know that one use of nanotubes is to increase the strength of golf clubs? Check out example products and see their composite structure at the Monark Golf site (4). An article published in the San Francisco Chronicle (5) describes a nano-engineered golf ball that minimizes wobbling and drift. The nanomaterials used in the ball have special properties that allow it to correct its weight distribution at a given moment. Chemistry International (the IUPAC news magazine) has published a summary of nanotechnology’s influence in sports, which can be found on their Web site (6). An excellent resource for instructors and students is the Exploratorium: Sport Science site (7), maintained by the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco. There you’ll find a variety of multi-media articles including the “Science of Cycling” (8). At the Exploratorium site (9), you can read how materials chemistry has played a large role in improving the bicycle frame; at the American Chemistry Council’s site (10), you can learn about bicycle tires and helmets. Speaking of helmets, the Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network (WEPAN) has a “Design a Bicycle Helmet” activity that you can try with your students (11).
photo by Guillaume Gielly
Ice hockey helmets are often reinforced with Kevlar or Fiberglas. (Image licensed for use under Creative Commons attribution in ShareAlike.)
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Chemistry has also impacted the game of ice hockey. The Exploratorium describes how players now enjoy stronger goalie masks and hockey sticks (12). Graphite and aluminum shafts are stronger and lighter than traditional wooden sticks, and the masks are made stronger with Kevlar and/or fiberglas. This site also discusses the chemistry of ice and the impact of temperature and texture on the speed of both players and puck (13). On the subject of cold things, what about the artificial snow that is used on ski slopes? What is it? How is it made? How does it work? An article in Chemical & Engineering News tells you about the materials and methods used to make this stuff (14). In almost any sport, the athlete’s shoe is a careful consideration, and a lot of work goes into designing it. On the Teachers’ Domain site (15) watch a downloadable video that documents one engineer’s process for creating and testing a new running shoe. If you’d like to bring sports materials into the classroom, see an article in this Journal that describes using different sports balls—including ping-pong, tennis, baseball, basketball, and soccer—to model atomic sizes (16). Chemistry As Fun and Games, a presentation of chemistry sports games by four high school teachers (17), shows you how to incorporate more sports into your course. You can find out about the physics involved in football from a series of short videos by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nebraska (18). Sportsrelated lab activities may be found at The Science House (19). Chemistry and the Athlete While scientifically advanced sports equipment is very interesting, the health of the athlete is of utmost importance. The NSDL Scout Report links to sites that discuss nutrition and athletics (20). The Sports Nutrition Corner is an excellent place to learn about healthy food choices for the athlete and how the body metabolizes carbohydrates (21). Go down to Resources and click on Carbohydrate. You can read about how the body metabolizes simple sugars, and find a discussion on when to ingest carbohydrates to prepare for exercise. The site also has resources that discuss the importance of staying hydrated and guidelines for a healthy diet. Take your students to a sports nutrition tutorial from Montana State University where they can learn all about muscle contraction and the athlete’s metabolism (22). In one section of the tutorial, students learn about two types of muscle fiber (fast twitch and slow twitch) and how the two have different oxidative capacities. In a different section, students learn about gender differences for storing and using glycogen. Another important place for resources on nutrition is the Fitness and Sports Nutrition site from the National Agricultural Library of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (23). There you will find links to dietary guidelines for athletes and U.S. physical activity statistics. Athletes are often seen “refueling” with sports drinks; several articles in this Journal describe analyzing the content of various sports drinks (24–26). The Web site of the American Sports Medicine Institute is another online resource you’ll want to visit. Learn about vari-
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 85 No. 10 October 2008 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • © Division of Chemical Education
Chemical Education Today
photo by Laura Hagen
photo by Laura Hagen
ous student research projects at the Institute, such as studies on common joint injuries, or the biomechanical evaluation of a pitch in baseball (27). Steroid use in sports has been in the news lately. The Corante site has an interesting article that describes how officials test for steroid abuse (28). On a related note, go to the NOVA site to learn about the efforts of Percy Julian, an African-American chemist, to synthesize human steroids from plant steroids (29); or view a clip from the televised episode about Julian’s life, Forgotten Genius (30). Lastly, train yourself to become the best athlete you can be and improve your own health and fitness. One way of doing this is to take the MIT Open Course, SP.235 Chemistry of Sports, with instructor Patricia Christie (31). You’ll learn about the chemical principles behind the sports of swimming, bicycling, and running, and train to complete a triathlon at the end of the semester. Hopefully these online resources will inspire you to learn about the science behind sports and to get up and get moving. Now let’s play ball! Literature Cited: World Wide Web Addresses (all sites accessed Jul 2008)
General 1. http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2002/Jul/abs813.html
Chemistry and Sports Equipment 2. http ://www.smalltimes.com/Articles/Article_Displ ay. cfm?ARTICLE_ID=269245&p=109 3. http://www.wilson.com/wilson/racquet/region.jsp takes you to the Wilson Sporting Goods Web site; select your region of the world; under the Rackets heading you can find current models and information about current technology used to make them. 4. http://www.monarkgolf.com/categories.asp?cID=87 5. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/22/BUG719UQFL1.DTL&type=techc 6. http://old.iupac.org/publications/ci/2006/2801/2_smith.html 7. http://www.exploratorium.edu/sports/index.html 8. http://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/ 9. http://www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/frames1.html 10. http ://www.americanchemistr y.com/s_acc/sec_article. asp?CID=22&DID=7110 11. http://www.wepan.org/associations/5413/files/MTCbike_ helmet9_10a.pdf 12. http://www.exploratorium.edu/hockey/gear1.html
Many bike frames are reinforced with titanium or carbon nanotubes. At left, cyclist Karsten Hagen competes in a time trial in Estacada, Oregon. Chemistry has yielded bikes strong enough to traverse the roughest terrain (right). Karsten Hagen is shown again, mountain biking in the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, AZ.
13. http://www.exploratorium.edu/hockey/ice1.html 14. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8203snow.html. An adaptation of this Chemical & Engineering News article about artificial snow is available at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/01/040120035003.htm. 15. http://www.teachersdomain.org/resources/eng06/sci/engin/ design/sneakerdesign/index.html 16. http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/1998/Jun/abs725.html 17. http://nobel.scas.bcit.ca/chemed2005/tradingPost/TUPM_ S2_4_15ChemFunGames.pdf 18. http://physics.unl.edu/outreach/football.html 19. http://www.science-house.org/student/bw/sports/index.html
Chemistry and the Athlete 20. http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/NSDL/LifeSci/2004/ls-040820topicindepth.php#1 21. http://www.nismat.org/nutricor/index.html 22. http://btc.montana.edu/olympics/nutrition/default.htm 23. http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/etext/000054.html 24. http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2007/Jan/abs124.html 25. http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2001/Jun/abs788.html 26. http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2001/Jun/abs791.html 27. http://www.asmi.org/asmiweb/research.htm 28. http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/08/01/testosterone_ carbon_isotopes_and_floyd_landis.php 29. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/julian/ 30. http://www.teachersdomain.org/resources/pj07/sci/phys/matter/ steroids/index.html 31. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Special-Programs/SP235Spring-2007/CourseHome/index.htm
Supporting JCE Online Material
http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2008/Oct/abs1334.html Abstract and keywords Full text (PDF) with links to cited URLs and JCE articles Supplement Fully manipulable ( Jmol) versions of many polymers are part of the JCE Featured Molecules collection on JCE Online at http:// www.JCE.DivCHED.org/JCEWWW/Features/MonthlyMolecules/. This month’s column on p 1456 expands that collection.
Janice Hall Tomasik is a member of the Department of Chemistry, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI 48859;
[email protected].
© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 85 No. 10 October 2008 • Journal of Chemical Education
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