Paul Stenquist wrote: >Drag racing starts are based on anticipation. A yellow light precedes the >green >and the drivers time their reaction based on that light. Its said that if you >see green, youve lost. There are occasional zero reaction times, and of >course >there are fouls. In other words, a .006 reaction time isnt really a .006 >reaction >but its darn good timing.
Yep. In Olympic track events you're not allowed to anticipate the start. Anything less than I think 0.2 sec is assumed to be anticipating the start. This causes a false start and everyone has to go back to the starting blocks. Anyone who causes more than one false start is disqualified. The whole business can make short events like the 100 meters a bit aggravating (sprinters are naturally pretty wired people). IMHO they should just allow anticipated starts as long as they don't actually precede the gun and use the runner's actual time from leaving the blocks (they have sensors in the blocks to catch this) to crossing the line. It's technologically feasible to do this with great accuracy now. I suppose it's theoretically possible under such a system that the first runner across the line might not be the winner, but this would have to be extraordinarily rare and pretty much invisible to human observers. -- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
