[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
No, you don’t.
A given set of prints could be produced from long air time and more moderate speed, or short air time and more extreme speed.
I expect a range of possible speeds is known for human locomotion for any given distance between steps, but it won’t be any exact number.[/quote]
Yeah, I would expect a generic model formula that they just plug in for stride length.
I was just throwing out there physical ways of calculating it. And when I was talking about calculating air time I was including impact conditions, not simple projectile trajectory.
Frankly, as “honest” as this guy is being with some other of his claims – any Neanderthal woman could beat Arnold in an arm-wrestling match; with training a Neanderthal woman would have 90% the muscle of Arnold at his peak – I wouldn’t be surprised if he was given a range of possible speeds for the distance measured between steps, and picked the extreme high end so as to come up with his figure which was still 3 mph slower than Usain Bolt.
And then he added in his fudge factors to come up with his headline news of the Aborigine being faster than Usain Bolt.
I just don’t find too much intellectual integrity in this person. I do see someone desperate for attention. The Balloon Boy anthropologist, one might say.