Sports Physiology

Create a list of things that great athletes do to keep themselves fit.

Collaborate and discuss different sports, in a group. Create a chart of several different sports. Categorize them into sports that need balls, sports that need a hitting tool, etc.

Create a Venn diagram to compare a person's observation of a sporting event with the experience of a participant.

In a group make a chart of the muscles that are important to a specific sport. Then list exercises that would improve those muscles.

List as many sports as you can — then count them.

Throw a football. Measure how far you threw it. Throw a baseball or softball. Now measure its distance. Which one did you throw the farthest? (Do this outside in a clear location).

Using a yardstick, a tape measure, a stopwatch and some tape, measure your flexibility using this Mayo Clinic website for instructions.

Create a large coordinate grid on the playground. Create cards to identify a number of locations. Have students move to the location on their card through movement opportunities. Examples: Run to (8,6). Skip to (3,4). For a more complex activity, include more than one coordinate and movement per activity, e.g., skip to (7,5) and then jog to (2,3).

Examples of observations could include that all animals need to take in food in order to live and grow, and the different kinds of food needed.

All organisms have body parts. Different animals use their body parts in different ways. Different animals use their body parts in different ways to grasp objects, protect themselves, and move from place to place.

The faster a given object is moving, the more energy it possesses.

Emphasis is on systems of information transfer.

Animals have various body systems with specific functions for sustaining life: skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, muscular, digestive, etc. Examples of structures could include heart, stomach, lungs, brain, etc.

The energy released from food was once energy from the sun that was captured by plants. Food provides animals with the materials they need for body repair and growth and the energy they need for motion.

Motion energy is properly called kinetic energy; it is proportional to the mass of the moving object and grows with the square of its speed. Emphasis is on descriptive relationships between kinetic energy and mass separately from kinetic energy and speed. Examples could include riding a bicycle at different speeds.

The motion of an object is determined by the sum of the forces acting on it; if the total force on the object is not zero, its motion will change. The greater the mass of the object, the greater the force needed to achieve the same change in motion. For any given object, a larger force causes a larger change in motion. All positions of objects and the directions of forces and motions must be described in an arbitrarily chosen reference frame and arbitrarily chosen units of size. Emphasis is on balanced (Newton's First Law) and unbalanced forces in a system, qualitative comparisons of forces, mass and changes in motion (Newton's Second Law), frame of reference, and specification of units.

Within individual organisms, food moves through a series of chemical reactions in which it is broken down and rearranged to form new molecules, to support growth, or to release energy. Emphasis is on describing that molecules are broken apart and put back together and that in this process, energy is released.

In multicellular organisms, the body is a system of multiple interacting subsystems. These subsystems are groups of cells that work together to form tissues. Tissues form organs that are specialized for particular body functions. Examples could include the interaction of subsystems within a system and the normal functioning of those systems.