Physics and … basketball?
At first glance, physics and basketball seem worlds apart, but at Harvard they’re connected in more ways than one. Take Physics Night at Leverett House, for example, and an intrasquad basketball game at the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) — two activities that develop both mind and body, nurturing the individual and the community simultaneously. Physics comes into play in basketball whenever a player jumps in the air to shoot or rebound. What enthusiasts call “hang time” — when a player appears frozen at the peak of his leap — is the result of projectile motion. When a player springs upward, the strength of the vertical velocity thrust determines the time he spends airborne. There’s also a horizontal element of velocity, but that remains constant throughout the jump, since gravity doesn’t play a role. Howard Georgi, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics, said Physics Night started in 1998 when three things coincided: He became master of...