The Physics of Sports will be relaunched in the Spring semester by the Physics department at Ohio State. Graphic: Faith Schneider | Arts & Life Photo Editor
Students with an interest in sports looking to add a science course to their schedule may consider an updated four credit-hour version of a course offered through the physics department: Physics 1111: The Physics of Sports.
The class was last offered as a three-credit hour course in Spring 2024 instructed by Christopher Hill, a professor in the physics department.
Hill said the course, which is open to admit 80 students, has been popular among STEM and non-STEM majors alike.
“It’s a fun course because it’s at the same time, not very difficult physics, but also much more realistic physics than maybe the students get in the other physics classes,” Hill said. “Because what we do is analyze real sports videos.”
Hill said that through analyzing real footage of plays in a variety of sports, like football and baseball, students will make calculations of distance, velocity, speed, air resistance and friction, among other things to compare against predicted outcomes.
“We take that all into account so we can make predictions that are very close to what actually happens on the field,” Hill said. “If not, we learn from what’s missing.”
Hill said that the class will use current footage from recent games, even relevant examples of student athletes.
“Mostly it’s current sports that somebody might have been watching last weekend,” Hill said. “I look for something that’s relevant to one of the concepts in the class, and then we do it in real time: We’ll play the video, we’ll stop it, we’ll freeze frame it, we’ll talk about it.”
Hill said that digitized sports statistics provides ample data to study, citing websites like the Major League Baseball’s Statcast where data will be pulled for the course.
“We’ll take like an Aaron Judge home run,” Hill said. “He’ll hit the ball, we’ll have the exit [velocity] and the angle, and we can calculate how far it’s going to go given some other factors on the night, what’s the elevation of the stadium, what’s the air temperature [and] with that information we can [make calculations] and check what Statcast said.”
The course is taught using the textbook “The Physics of Sports,” written by Ohio State physics Professor Michael Lisa.
Hill said that while the course is “not probably the easiest class in the world,” he said it’s not the most difficult one.
“We try to teach it [so that it’s] accessible to all students, and there’s no physics background required for the class.” Hill said. “Most of the math is simplified, it’s really for that non-physics, non-STEM student who is interested in sports, which a lot of people are and would like to get an insight into it.”
Hill said that past course offerings have been taken by Ohio State athletes, including current football defensive lineman Will Smith Jr. and former Buckeye and former defensive end, Jack Sawyer, who now plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Smith and Sawyer were unable to be reached for comment by the time of publication.
Hill said that student athletes can provide their perspectives and thought process while the class is analyzing their play.
“For athletes, I teach them ‘You know, your coaches are going to tell you how to do this and stuff, but what you’re going to learn in this class is maybe why it works,’” Hill said.
Hill said that out of the wide range of classes he teaches, this is his favorite. He learns more about the sports he enjoys while teaching, he said.
“Some things are just really minor weird things that you learn, but they stick with me.” Hill said.
The physics department website currently only lists the outdated version of the course as physics 1110, but the updated version, Physics 1111, can be found on the Ohio State course catalog search.
