Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem Sunday gave his country its first javelin throw gold with a Commonwealth Games record mark of 90.18m. Nadeem has crossed the 90m barrier which India’s Neeraj Chopra is yet to breach. Chopra, who skipped the CWG competition due to injury, has his personal best recorded at 89.94m.
On August 7 last year, Chopra had won a javelin gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics to give India its first-ever gold in athletics. With healthy rivalry between the two stars set to grow in javelin competitions of the future, we look at the physics that makes a javelin fly past the 90m ‘gold standard’ distance.
Angle of throw
“Although high-school physics says that for maximum range, a projectile should be launched at a 45-degree angle, it is true only when the launch and the target are at the same height,” Dr Arnab Bhattacharya, professor at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics & Materials Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, had tweeted last year.
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He explained that in javelin, the launch is 2m above ground and the target is at the ground and there are many aspects of aerodynamics involved. This makes the optimal angle 36-degrees.
Design is key
The key concept is that the centre of gravity has to be ahead (4 cm) of the centre of pressure. “This is already inbuilt in the design of a modern javelin. The shape and weight distribution of the javelin are such that the centre of gravity is ahead of the centre of...
Read Full Story: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/arshad-nadeem-commonwealth-games-javelin-technique-design-rules-8079164/
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