PHYSICS

They shoot, they score! At NSTA, we turned our Pop-a-Shot basketball game into an exciting experiment to explore the principles of projectile motion with Vernier Video Analysis^®!

This is a great activity to introduce after your class has spent some time examining one-dimensional motion—including falling vertically under the influence of Earth’s gravity and motion on a horizontal surface.

In this experiment, we examined the behavior of projectiles—objects moving in space due to some initial launching force. You can easily set this up in your school gym or outdoors using any ball that stands out against the background. 

Ever wondered how long you stay in the air when you jump? That’s your hang time. In basketball, this describes the amount of time a player’s feet are off the ground during a layup or a jump shot. While the average person has a hang time of around half a second, basketball great Michael Jordan’s recorded an impressive 0.92 seconds! 

AT NSTA, we put Team Vernier members and NSTA attendees to the test with our brand new Go Direct Force Plate. We challenged everyone to give us their best standing jumps, and then collected data on each participant’s hang time. 

From tennis legend Serena Williams to soccer great Lionel Messi, there’s a good reason we see the top athletes of all time swear by sports drinks loaded with electrolytes.

But what exactly are electrolytes, and why are they so crucial? Think of them as the body’s MVPs. Electrolytes play a vital role in nerve and muscle function. Among other things, they regulate blood pressure and blood pH and help keep our tissues hydrated. As the name implies, in many cases, electrolytes are involved with carrying electrical current in our bodies. During physical exertion we can lose electrolytes through sweating, which is why athletes commonly drink beverages high in electrolytes.

So, what’s the science behind electrolytes? Essentially, they’re salts and molecules that have the ability to ionize to varying degrees. Some, like strong electrolytes, fully ionize, while others, like weak electrolytes, only partially do so. Then there are nonelectrolytes, which do not ionize at all. We can determine whether a compound falls into the strong, weak, or nonelectrolyte category by measuring the conductivity of its solution.

In this experiment, our chemistry team used the Go Direct Conductivity Probe to analyze the components of sports drinks commonly used by athletes to replenish electrolytes and water lost during physical activity and determine which molecules or ions are responsible for the conductivity of solutions.