College Profile 2023

goal attempt. “If you knew the angle of launch and the velocity of the launch, you can determine the path of the projectile. For field goals, you can look at the ball immediately after it leaves the kicker’s foot, and you can trace the parabolic path as long as nobody jumps in to block it,” she said. “If you could do the calculations quickly enough, you could determine where the ball is going to go.” When a quarterback hits a wide re ceiver in stride for a touchdown, that’s physics, too. The quarterback knows the angle at which he must throw the ball to get it to the point on the field where the receiver is running. The receiver knows how long the ball will be in the air to get to that spot, determin ing the distance and how fast he needs to run. But even before the quarterback lets the pass go, he is using physics. “He’s pulling his arm back and using the muscles in his arm to create an accelera tion, which produces that force.” Physics in play Physics even plays a role in whether a receiver catches the ball or drops it. “The receiver has to exert a force on the football if he’s going to catch it,” she said. “We have to look at the coefficient of friction between his hands and the ball. That’s where the gloves a player wears play a role. You want your hands to be kind of sticky if you’re going to catch the ball, right? That’s why a slick, wet ball is difficult to throw and catch because of the low coefficient of friction.” After the receiver catches the ball, there’s the collision. “A big part of the game is hitting other people, and what we’re talking about there is momentum. You want your defensive line to be your biggest guys. The reason is that momentum is the mass of the individual times their velocity. If you have a big, heavy guy going fast, you have a large momentum. If he is pitted against a running back or a receiver, who typically has a much smaller mass, they can typically hold them back,” Pope said. Physics also plays a role in equip ment. Helmets, mouth guards and shoulder pads cushion the impact the

player is going to experience. “That’s called impulse, which is the force multiplied by the change in time. So when a player is thrown to the ground, the same amount of force will stop him, whether or not they have padding. But if they have that padding, it is going to cushion the impact and give their head, or whatever body part is striking the ground, a longer time to stop,” she said. “Injuries are mitigated Pope said she’s the last person who thought she’d be using the gridiron to teach Newton’s laws of motion. “I have zero coordination, so I haven’t ever played organized sports,” she said. “But I love physics, and I love being able to talk to people about my passion through a passion of theirs.” One of Pope’s former students, for mer Tiger long snapper Austin Spence, nominated her as a guest professor for P.A.W. Journey, a program designed to help Clemson Football players to because of that.” Laws of motion

be successful in all aspects of life. The guest professors travel with the football team to take part in a game weekend experience. She sat in on a defensive meeting, where she listened to then-Defensive Coordinator Brent Venables talk to his players about the game plan. “I knew every word he used, but I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. He kept calling guys Mike, and several Mikes would respond. I later figured out Mike was a position, not their actual names,” she said. She decided that how she felt in that team meeting was probably similar to how her students felt in her class. “I tell students they already know a lot about physics. They just don’t realize it yet,” said Pope, who earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in physics from Clemson. “When you’re able to take something that students are comfortable with and connect it to science, it breaks down the barrier of fear that a lot of students have.”

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CLEMSON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SCIENCE | 2023 COLLEGE PROFILE