Dance Concert

Yesterday, I went to the Castle High School Dance Concert. The contemporary dances were pretty cool. In many of the numbers, the dancers leaped as they moved across the stage. The motion as the dancers leaped and fell back to the floor is an example of projectile motion. In order to move across the stage instead of jumping in place, the dancers had to leap with a certain x-velocity. Also, another basic move that was repeated was turning. The dancers doing single and double turns showed rotational motion. Eventually, the dancers would stop turning after a turn or two because of the torques opposing the rotational motion. There was a torque of friction acting on the foot spinning on the floor and there was also a torque of air resistance on the dancer's body. The dancers had to put in enough initial angular velocity to create a large enough torque to overcome the opposing torques of friction and air resistance to complete the turns.