Physics Journal #5

This weekend, we had our xc meet at kamehameha school. Because of the rain, the ground was insanely muddy and it made us have hard time running the race. Because of the slipperliness, one of our runner fell down right after the race began. When the officials stopped the race because of an unadvantageous start, my friend and i discussed about how this has something to do with physics. We both agreed that the ground has a low static friction coefficient. Because of that, as the force we put in to kick the ground increases, there's higher chance of our shoes slipping on the ground. We discussed on what the best way to deal with this problem. One of my friend said it would be better to run from heel to toe because there would be more surface for the shoe to grip on the ground. However, i disagreed with that because i thought the longer time we have our foot on the ground would increase the chance of our foot slipping. Therefore, i suggested to run on the toes and kicking the ground more perpendicular to the ground than we usually do because if we kick the ground almost perpendicular to the ground, the friction force would be at its max. However, if you ran from heal to toe, it would be difficult to do that because you must exert a force in a backward direction which would lower the normal force which would lower the friction force, making the shoes slip on the ground.