THE PHYSICS OF MICHAEL JACKSON’S MOONWALK! Moonwalk is defined as the following series of moves: 1. place right foot behind left foot, then raise right foot to toe, in an “L” position; 2. slide left foot back to finish at right foot, slowly moving upward onto its toes; 3. while moving left foot onto the toes, right foot simultaneously moves down to be flat; 4. process repeats on each foot; 5. leg that is moving backwards bends kneecap slightly forward to create illusion of walking forward. Are you now interested about the scientific aspects of a perfect moonwalk? The physics key concept is friction. Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and/or material elements sliding against each other. Static friction is a force exerted on an object when it is in contact with some surface but those two surfaces do not move relative to each other. Kinetic friction is a force exerted on an object when the two surfaces are moving. The static friction model is given by: Fvector_s
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:00:01 +0000