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This weekend the fastest sprinters on the planet came together Tokyo Olympics competing for gold in the 100-meter dash. Lamont Marcell Jacobs crossed the finish line in 9.80 seconds to bring his first gold to Italy. In the women’s race, Jamaica won gold, silver and bronze — a clean sweep led by Elaine Thompson-Herah — beating the 33-year-old women’s Olympic record with a time of 10.61 seconds.
Neither of them was able to touch Usain Bolt’s eight-time Olympic gold medal legacy in Jamaica, he retired in 2017 but holds the title of fastest man still alive. Bolt ran 100 meters in 9.58 seconds. It lasts about 27 miles per hour, under the low speed of a domestic cat. (Yes, the domestic cat.) In the race against cheetahs and horns, the fastest animal in the world, Bolt would have no choice.
One might think what speed an animal can take depends on the size of its muscles: more strength, more speed. While partly true, an elephant will never overtake a gazelle. So what determines the maximum speed?
Recently, a team of scientists led by biomechanic Michael Günther, then linked to the University of Stuttgart, set out to determine the laws of nature governing the maximum speed of race in the animal kingdom. In one new study published last week Journal of Theoretical Biology, they present a complex model considering the size, leg length, muscle density, etc. to know which design elements of the body are the most important for optimizing speed.
This research provides insight into the biological evolution of animals in their legs and their movements, and can be used by ecologists to understand that speed reductions in animal movement inform the population, habitat selection and community dynamics of different species. For robotics and biomedical engineers, knowing optimal body structures for the speed of nature can improve designs bipedal walking machines and prostheses.
“It’s about understanding the causes of evolution, and why and how it shapes the body,” Günther says of the project’s goal. “If you ask that question mechanically, you can add an understanding of how body design is made up of evolutionary requirements, such as being fast.”
Previous work in this area, Led by Myriam Hirt of the German Center for Integral Biodiversity Research, found that the key to speed was related to the animal’s metabolism, the process by which the body converts nutrients into fuel, storing a finite amount in muscle fibers. for use in sprinting. Hirt’s team found that larger animals deplete this fuel faster than smaller animals because they need more time to accelerate heavier bodies. This is known as muscle fatigue. Theoretically, it explains why humans can have it Tyrannosaurus passed a rex.
But Günther and his colleagues were skeptical. “I thought we would be able to give another explanation,” he says, explaining the speed reductions he used only the principles of classical physics. So they built a biomechanical model consisting of body design, race geometry, and 40 different parameters of the competing forces acting on the body.
“The basic idea is that two things limit maximum speed,” says Robert Rockenfeller, a mathematician at the University of Koblenz-Landau, who led the study. The first is air resistance or drag, which causes the opposing force on each leg while trying to push the body forward. Since the effects of drag do not increase with mass, the maximum limit speed for smaller animals is speed. “If you were infinitely heavy, you would continue to run, depending on the drag of the air,” Rockenfeller says.
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