Pole vault

Pole vaulting is when a person is trying to

go up as high as they can by using a long pole
to aid them in this feat. Back in the day, pole
vaulting was used to propel oneself across
canals and open drains. Now it has been
made into a sport to try to get height instead
of distance. In track and field today, it one of
the 4 jumping events. The part of the pole
vault that I am calculating is the fall. This is
when you have just crossed over the cross bar
and fall from that height to the mat. In this
part, the two most prevalent energies are
gravitational potential energy and kinetic
energy. Gravitational potential energy can be
defined as energy stored due to an object
mass and height (pg. 34). One definition of
Kinetic Energy is movement of an object
from one place to another (pg. 34).
The video of me pole vaulting shows that
while I am in the air hovering above the cross
bar, I would have 889.84 joules of potential
energy, and since at the time I am not moving
down, I would have 0 joules of kinetic energy.

When I land onto the mat, I would have 308.7

joules of gravitational potential energy from
the mat to the ground. To calculate how
much gravitational potential energy I would
have when I hit the mat, you would subtract
308.7 from 889.84. This would mean 581.14
joules of gravitational potential energy are
present. While I am way into my fall, I
would have 290.57 joules of potential energy
and 290.7 joules of kinetic energy. Less than
millimeters off of the mat, I would have close
to 0 joules of potential energy and about
290.7 joules of kinetic energy relative to the
mat.
One type of energy that is commonly
known as lost energy is sound energy.
Sound energy is the vibration of an object and
is released when I hit the mat and make a
thudding sound. If you were there when I was
pole vaulting and were listening very closely,
you could hear a thud as I landed on the mat.
As an added point, I calculated the amount of
time that it took me to fall 1.3 meters from
the cross bar to the mat. It took me .51
seconds. I figured this out with the equation;

time = the square root of 2 x the fall distance

x the force of gravity. When analyzing the
video, I came up with the exact same number
as when I did the calculations! In Pole Vault
there are many other ways that energy is
transferred. Some examples are chemical
energy to kinetic for the run, and kinetic
energy to elastic energy from the bend of the
pole. It was fun to analyze something I enjoy
doing so much with the physics involved in
the movements. Maybe I can improve my
results this year by analyzing my jumps!