Football is the most popular sport on the planet. In 2006 FIFA reported that there were 265 million players registered to one of its member associations, and this doesn’t include the countless players who have the occasional kick around at the park. Around 40 million footballs are sold each year around the world, making the […]
How fast is Usain Bolt?
Introduction Four years ago Usain Bolt from Jamaica was pretty much unknown, but since then he has become, arguably, the most famous athlete in the world. In 2010 I wrote an article attempting to predict how far he would jump in the long jump. The fame surrounding Bolt is so great that this article quickly […]
Is sport good for us?
“Is sport good for us” was the question posed to me for my first blog article for Engineering Sport. Not exactly an ‘easy ice breaker’, but I thought I’d have a good go at it. So, where to start? First, I think it’d be a good idea to differentiate (at least a little) between sport […]
How can we cycle faster?
At the museum we have a great exhibit with two racing bikes along a simulated course; this has sparked a range of questions on the topic of cycling, from the physics of riding a bike to the most popular question; how can we cycle faster? How do we master the art of balancing on two […]
How long can we hold our breath for?
As something most of us will have wondered when swimming, the next blog post in our ‘ask a Sports Engineer!’ series looks at how long we’re able to hold our breath for underwater. Despite what most people would think, humans are actually quite well suited to being underwater, as after all, we spend the first […]
What is Sport?
The very first question I thought I’d tackle in our ‘Ask a Sports Engineer’ project is quite a fundamental one and also quite different from the subjects we usually tackle on engineeringsport: What is Sport? A lot of the questions we’ve received from the question box asked questions very similar to this. Some people were […]
Why are the South Americans so good at football?
This is a question often posed by football fans as it seems to be a regular trend that the most impressive footballers in the world are from Southern America. You can strike up a debate with anyone about who the greatest ever football player is and you can almost guarantee the following three names will […]
Ask a sports engineer launch
In the coming months the EngineeringSport blog should have a lot more content on its pages thanks to a project in collaboration with the V&A’s museum of childhood and an Ingenious grant from the Royal Academy of Engineering. Our Sports Engineers will be on hand to answer your questions The Beautiful Games exhibition (which is […]
Engineering Sport 