Breakin some ankles with rotational motion
Watch: http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:7309828
Harrison Barnes is most likely the #1 overall pick in whatever year he enters the draft. His ability to spin in circles is one of the reasons why.
720 degrees is equal to 12.57 radians. Assuming constant angular accleration, he is acclerating at 41.9 rad/s/s (it took him .3 sec to start to spin). But a good question to ask is why can't althletes who have had knee surgery (like the dreaded ACL/MCL surgery) do this. Well, assuming that the knee provides most, if not all, of the torque nessary to spin. Harrison Barnes, who is 6'8'', would most likely have his knees located 20 inches (.508 meters) away from his center of mass. Now the knee is going to have a moment of inertia of just mr^2 for this (it might be different but I don't know if scientists have figured out monents of inertia for body parts). So net torque is equal to mr^2 times angular accleration, which in this case is (don't know what the mass of a knee is, couldn't find it on google so 1 kg seems to be a good guess ) 10.81 Nm. Now torque is equal to force times radius, so the force is equal to torque/radius, or in this case 21.28 N. That's alot for the knee to take over and over, so if the knee goes, so will Harrison's spin moves.
Now i know i made alot of assumptions, so if anyone has actual facts, leave it in comments please. Next post: the force required for Barnes to take off
Random Sports Fact: Chris Paul was traded to the Clippers, pairing him with Blake Griffin. Over/under on Sportscenter top 10 Paul-to-Griffin alley-oops: 15. Diasagree in comments if you want to.
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