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FRIEZE NEW YORK 2013
This won't work.
This will.
If you visited a baseball stadium as a child*, that's probably the first time you could observe that sound travels slower than light: You see the batter hit the ball, but you don't hear the CRACK until half a second later.
That half a second is a problem for Olympic runners, where every millisecond counts. When a starting pistol is used to start a race, the runner closest to the gun has a slight advantage over the athlete furthest away. To combat this, Olympic timing sponsor Omega created an electronic starting pistol that makes no noise at all, but is instead wired to speakers directly behind each runner.
Previously Omega had tried wiring a regular starting pistol (pictured up top) to speakers, but it didn't work; runners would instinctively only respond to the sound of the real gun, not the speaker-borne sound emitted a millisecond earlier. The new gun, which only sounds through the speakers, solves that problem.
The electronic gun is actually not new—it first saw service at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics—but it has now become the standard.
*Speaking of standards, or lack thereof: To our non-U.S. readers for whom the baseball stadium situation doesn't apply, what was the first instance you can recall where you could observe the speed-of-sound phenomenon? (I'm guessing that say, soccer matches don't produce the same sharp noise as a bat on a ball.)
via the atlantic
Comments
fireworks
It may very well fit in the hand nicely, but visually that thing looks so awkward...
In a storm that it's far you can find the same phenom, lighting vs thunder velocity are the same as case. You can see the lightning and some time after you heard the thunder (the time depend on how far the storm is).
Hunting. I still remember watching some hunters across the field shoot at a flock, seeing the birds fall out of the sky, and only later hearing the shots.
Watching planes fly across the sky - they were always ahead of where the sound was coming from. When I was five or six I thought they were flying faster than the speed of sound (which I'd seen on TV or something), then my Dad explained about how sound travels slower than light. Still took me a fair while to believe him, though.
A cricket match.
Airshows. When a eurofighter or tornado shoots past and only a second later you are deafened
It was soccer for me, actually. It was the goalkeepers long kick of the ball to mid-field where it made a deep thud when hitting the ground. The sound was delayed and it boggled my 5-year old mind.
good idea, but why even have a pistol then? if they are just going to fake the sound through speakers, then the pistol is superfluous.
... not to mention it looks like a price scanner. if you are forcing yourself to pay for a superfluous item for the sake of retaining some sort of visual tradition, at least structure the form factor so that it relates to what has been used before.
In athletics events such as the 200m 3k, 5k 1500m and walks, the starter is positioned close to the start line in order to determine if a false start has been made.
Where electronic and integrated timekeeping is not available, a crew of timekeepers is positioned at the finish line and presses a start button on their stopwatch at the sight of either smoke where the starter is using a pistol with explosive caps or a light in the front of the pistol if something like this omega were eto be used.
There is no visual tradition here, its practical purpose and application.