Stripped down and ready to play...
What role is science and technology taking in the Atlanta Games? You could just say "gargantuan" and leave it at that. Once upon a time, Olympic athletes used neither clothes nor running shoes -- just the occasional discus and javelin. What a difference a few millennia make!

To prove the point, let's look at the technology that's been deployed in the effort to attain faster speeds on the track (Did I hear a cynic mutter: "And higher ratings in the television sweepstakes"?) Shame, shame...

Animated superbike image courtesy of Electronic Data Systems Corporation.

On the playing field there's a raft of technology to ensure that the athletes crank out world records as they gobble the gold. This $5-million pursuit bike, inevitably hyped as the "Superbike," depends on carbon fiber, more carbon fiber, and tires inflated to a thumb-numbing 250 pounds per square inch. The aerodynamic efficiency of the one-piece frame was studied in a wind tunnel at a cost of $40,000 per hour. But hey, it's only a game, right?

Boxing trainers have embedded punching bags with devices to measure acceleration, the better to teach boxers to whack their opponents silly.

The uprights in the pole vault will be fitted with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to measure how high the athlete jumped. Traditionally, the winning vaulter is the person who gets over the highest bar setting. But that rule could change, now that we can measure actual altitude. Is that good?

And that's ignoring the ubiquitous use of computers in training athletes, the new materials for boats, clothing, athletic equipment, the laser accelerometers being used in the sprints... .

Off the playing field the technology is even more awesome, if that's conceivable. To take a tiny example, fans who can only visit Atlanta via television will be able to see where triple-jump (defined) jumpers land after each stage of the jump, thanks to new electronic technology.

Among the estimated $300-million worth of technology used to bring you these "Games" will be:

9,000 cellular phones
6,000 pagers
7,000 computers
10,000 TV monitors
300 local area networks

But that's just the start, amazingly enough: The '96 Olympics will also be using

• handprint identification
• color printing of photos on identification badges
• security badges that broadcast one's presence to security checkpoints
• a high-tech traffic management system to try to reroute road traffic around the inevitable bottlenecks
• meteorological equipment able to forecast weather for areas of less than one square mile
• even a fiber-optic network so journalists or officials at any of the 41 Olympic sites can get a video view of what's happening at any other site. So much for "on-scene reporting" -- this Games you could cover from Venus, if you had the right antenna.
• And for posterity, they'll be burning a CD-ROM with everything the Sydney, Australia, organizers will need to concoct their own Olympic extravaganza in 2000 -- except for the technology that will be invented in the next four years, that is. Stay tuned.

Want to see how computer-competent scientists can help you get away -- at least temporarily -- from boring 'ol gravity?

There are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 documents. (Glossary | Bibliography)