Author: wiredchop

Simon Choppin Simon’s sports engineering career began at the age of six when he loosened the wheels of his skateboard in order to make it go faster. While the experiment was chalked up as his first failure, his resulting dimpled skull has provided an aerodynamic advantage in more recent sporting pursuits. Academically, Simon completed a degree in Mechanical Engineering with Mathematics at Nottingham University before joining the Sports Engineering Research Group at Sheffield to start his PhD. His main interests include work with high speed video, mathematical modelling of various sorts and experimental work involving machines with big buttons. As a sportsman, Simon has an unfortunate lack of talent for anything requiring skill, tactical awareness or the ability to learn from mistakes. He does however seem to posess the ability to move his legs around for a long time until other people get tired, for this reason you’re most likely to see him on a bike of some sort or running up a hill in offensively small shorts. Simon was fortunate enough to have a stint at the Guardian newspaper as part of the BSA’s media fellowship, which gave him the idea for this blog. Other than this, his writing experience includes his PhD thesis and various postcards to his Mum.

Jabulani, a ball in crisis? -Update!

Update! It seems that everyone has something to say about the Jabulani. As the official ball for the 2010 World Cup, it has a lot to live up to, but seems to be attracting more criticism than jubilation. It is now a World Cup tradition that the new ball should be roundly slated before the […]

Who has the fastest balls in the land? Part 2:

Part one of this article looked at a video featuring a golfing long-drive champion, Jason Zuback and the attempt to usurp Jai-Alai as the fastest ball sport in the world. Despite the less than scientific methods, Zuback managed to generate a golf ball velocity in excess of 200 mph, smashing two panes of tempered glass in the […]

Who has the fastest balls in the land? Part 1:

When researching topics for lectures and public talks I often find myself on youtube, clicking through an endless parade of videos in search of interesting stories and useful information. It was while looking into the history of the golf ball (a fascinating topic in itself!) that I stumbled across the following clip.

Main Dieu! – Thierry Henry’s hand ball

We couldn’t let this one pass, even Radio 4’s Any Questions? had something to say. On Tuesday evening I gave a small lecture about the role of technology in Sport, I used Diego Maradonna’s famous Hand of God as a case study; should football utilise technology to assist referees? I hope the students marvelled at […]

Definitely not simple Simon

As a keen mountain biker I couldn’t let the introduction of a bicycle suspension system that shares my name go by unnoticed. I’m very attracted to the mechanical aspects of mountain biking, king of all the cogs, wheels and gizmos on a bike has to be the suspension system. Even since the very early, very simple days […]

Sports Engineering Rules

As the inaugural post on the engineering sport blog, there is a weight of responsibility bearing down on the next few paragraphs to set the scene correctly for every post that will follow. Of primary importance is to set out the stall and identify what particular niché this blog will fill in the n-dimensional multiverse […]