"Reaction [beta]"
Olympic start gun gives inside runners an edge 26 Jun 2008
The fastest athletes may not take the gold medals at Beijing this August. A number of scientific studies have determined that the Olympic starting gun gives the runners on the inside of the track (i.e. nearest the gun) an unfair advantage because the sound reaches the outer lanes later and the loud bang scares inside-lane runners out of the blocks earlier:
"Runners in lane eight got off the mark on average about 150 milliseconds after runners in lane one, Dapena found. A time delay of that magnitude translates to about a metre's difference at the finish line."
Sheesh! So we can add running below swimming on our list of unfair events...
[via kottke.org]
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oem software 17 Jan 2012 01:50 AM
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