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Data Collection
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Jump Height
To measure jump height, we acquired a Vertek Vertical Jump Measuring Device from the Athletics Department. First, the participant's standing reach was determined by having them stand upright below the Vertek stand, reaching over head with their dominant arm, and pushing the highest flags they could. After this height was noted, the flags were reset and the stand was raised higher if we thought the participant would jump higher than the stand could measure at the current setting. The participants were instructed to jump five times from a stationary position, from two feet, and without a running start. The flags were reset after each jump and participants were given a short rest. The participants had their shoes on for this part of the experiment for knee safety of landing on a hard surface repeatedly.
This is a diagram of angles measured. The blue angle is the maximum angle between the arm and the upper body, which indicates how much the subjects swung their arms. The yellow angle shows the maximum knee bend. Greater angles for the former and smaller angles for the later would seem to indicate that the subject utilized their limbs the most to jump as high as possible.
Vertek Jump Stand with flags set in position for testing.
Sample of Jump Data
Height and Weight
We measured the participants' height with a tape measure secured to a wall.
We measured the participants' weight with a digital scale. Both methods can be seen to the right and were done without shoes to more accurately measure height and weight.
This data was collected because it could be used as independent variables of our jump height comparisons. These were also parameters in the Johnson Bahamonde Power Equations. Since the equation was in SI units, the height and weight measurements were converted to centimeters and kilograms, respectively.
Sample of Height and Weight Data
Height, weight, average jump and standard deviation of five jumps (in US and SI units)
Power Data
Generally speaking, power is the amount of work done in a certain period of time. In sports, power is used to measure the explosiveness of athletes. In our study, the power we are concerned with is the work done to elevate one's body off the ground. Many studies have been conducted to create an equation for power generated based on an individual's height, weight, jump height, leg girth, body fat, and other similar bodily measurements. For the purpose of our experiment, we choose to use the Johnson Bahamonde power equations over the others because there was the least discrepancy between the calculated peak and average power.
Sample of Power Calculations
If you are interested in reading the full paper by Johnson and Bahamonde, click below!
Thigh and Calf Circumference
Sample of Calf and Thigh Data
To measure participant's thigh and calf circumference, a tape measure was wrapped around the planes six inches above and below the midpoint of the patella.
The purpose of collecting this information was to see if a certain leg size would result in higher jumps and higher power measurements.
Flight Time
During the jump tests, the participants were filmed with a Go Pro 4 video camera. Take off was considered when the participant's feet first left ground. With the camera's 29.97 fps setting, this was often difficult to pinpoint exactly. The same was done for the landing.
The number of frames between take off and landing was counted for each participants' jumps. Then the number of frames was converted to seconds using the equation shown below.
= flight time
frames x
1 second
29.97 frames
Take off
Landing
Sample Flight Time Data
Thigh and Calf Circumference
Sample Of Complete Data
This is a sample set of all data measurements from five of our test subjects.
The full set of our data can be found here:
Team Member Contributions
Team Member Contributions
Luke Betteridge
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Inserted data, content, and charts onto the website
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Analyzed website for any errors
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Analyzed Data
Joshua Charney
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Helped to measure heights
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Facilitated jumps and took video
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Designed website
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Analyzed data
Daniel Ma
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Acquired Vertek Stand
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Created participant survey
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Took body measurements of subjects
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Analyzed video for flight times and made other observations
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Performed power calculations
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Data and content presentation
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