Engineering to inspire

Featured Video: Respivest

Lance Armstrong outcycles his competitors because he has larger oxygen capacity. And this vest is designed to make your lungs work harder, hence increasing your oxygen capacity.

On a broader scale, this is an example of how technology can help to level or even surpass the playing field!

Roger Black goes to Loughborough University's Sports Technology department to investigate the Progressive Sports RespiVest for Tomorrow's World (BBC)

Take the Create2011 engineering challenge and tell us your vision of Future Mobility to win the grand prize of: A Nokia Experiential Journey in Beijing and Singapore! Check out our Facebook fanpage for exciting contests & giveaways!

Featured Video: Sport Science Hardest Kick

We love this TV series that’s all about how athletes do what they do. It measures their performance levels in terms of time, speed and force. For example, this one on Muay Thai demonstrates how hard they can kick – up to 1,000 lbs of force!

Now that’s impressive!

Melchor Menor shows how powerful a muay thai low kick can be. Sports Science shows how shinbone is broken down to become as hard as rock.

World Cup: Soccer Technologies

“Everyone’s watching it. Young ‘uns, old ones, not-so-old ones. Are you?”

It’s a shameless rip-off on Glee’s TVC spot. But it’s true, ain’t it?

Everyone’s watching the World Cup 2010 now; even though it’s shown during ungodly hours (2.30am, and bleary eyes anyone?).

We understand why...

After all, football (or “soccer” as the Yanks call it) grips us: a sigh of relief as defenders tackle the ball away from their goalmouth; midfielders lob balls into the opposing half where attackers latch onto it, run and volley into GOOOOAALLLLL!!!!

Now that’s football action for you.

And like other sports, technology has changed the beautiful game.

The balls fly faster, straighter (or in some cases, curve more), boots that supposedly grip the pitch better, lasers to determine if there’s a goal, and, for those who can’t make it to South Africa, watching the entire action in 3D.

Featured Video: Science of Soccer

Since it’s the World Cup, we thought we’d showcase the science behind soccer. How players bend the ball’s flight, how to turn it into a rocket-like object… y’know the kinds of things that make life difficult for goalkeepers.

Science and science fiction writer Edward Willett talks about the science of soccer on CBC Newsworld.

Watcha got planned for the hols?

It’s the holidays!

It usually means time off to slack, watch TV, and head out to the movies. Bugger that… There’s plenty to do in sunny Singapore and in your void deck. So don’t waste your time vegging out infront of the goggle box. And besides your mind’s too good to waste on popcorn and Gummiberry juice (so sue me, I made that one up :P).

Here are our picks of things to do this March holidays…

Think fast! Sports (part deux)

What happened on UCreateChange.com (1-7 Mar 2010)

Last week, we talked about how sports could be improved by science and technology on UCreateChange.com. Now we’re collating everything into this weekly digest.

Kudos to Australian Ben Kersten who won the OCBC Cycling Challenge held over the weekend (6-7 Mar). In grueling endurance sports, it really boils down to your training regime. Andy Potts, the top triathlete in USA uses his heart rate to gauge how much he should train. The results were spectacular: in just five years, he went from overweight weekend swimmer to a top-class professional athlete.

Winning is everything. That’s why athletes look every little edge that could beat down the competition. Some of them turn to modified sports equipment, while others down sports drinks to keep on going like the Energizer Bunny.

Finally, this is a smart use of a sporting equipment: S0ocket is a soccer ball that generates energy for off-grid rural areas. So kids kick it around to charge an embedded battery and use it later at night to power their lights.

Think fast! Modern sports technologies

Last December we posted about “5 Sports that were changed by technology”.

It got us thinking about sports and how it could be improved by science and technology. So we looked around on the web and discovered that the desire to jump higher, last longer, outdo your opponents has gotten athletes scrabbling around for the latest training techniques and break-world-records equipment. This created a fascinating field that has evolved from Bata shoes and mile long runs into carefully measured approaches that uses heartrate monitors and precise data crunching for maximal impact.

For the rest of this week, we’ll showcase sports technology and how it makes a difference in our Get Inspired posts. So check back frequently!

In the meantime, check out this video clip about the lengths that some people would go through for sports science.

John Brenkus (Sports Science)

Enjoy…

5 sports that were changed by technology

Love sports? Then you’ll know how important it is to get good sporting gear.

The best ones will enhance your gameplay and give you that edge over other players. It’s because millions of dollars are spent researching and improving sporting gear each year. Thus you’ll get new technology on the courts, fields or tracks all the time.

That’s a far cry from the 720 BC Grecian games when athletes once competed in the nude!

In this post we’ll look back at 5 sports that were greatly changed by engineering and technology since their naked beginnings: