PoleVaultPower.com

Go to this URL and read a great article on pole vault poles"

http://www.gillathletics.com/pvnews/Pol ... 20Pole.pdf

Eddie Seese

Good article. The math is a little over my head.

So I read this article in great detail, and as a physics kid, I really liked it. I found something particularly interesting that I thought some people might enjoy seeing.

At the end of the paper it starts to get into column theory and things like that, and using a mathematical equation to determine just how 'heavy' the pole is given your grip height, compared to the poles total length (found on page 10). Given the equation

Pg = Pn * (Ln^2 / Lg^2)

Pg being the weight at the low grip, Pn being the pole weight rating, Ln being the length of the pole and Lg being the height of the new grip.

I looked into the equation a bit, with the different poles and runway approaches that I have 'been competitive' with. To my surprise I found some really intertesting stuff.

No matter the runway, pole or pole grip, all of the 'effective weights' (pole weight at the lower grip) was within a pound of two, and when I got really picky about my best performances, they were within .1 of a pound.

The poles I use range from a 15' 155 from 3 Lefts, to a 15' 180 from 7, sometimes a 16' 170, but it still worked.

I thought that was kinda intersting and people might be interested in hearing that... any thoughts?

Too numbers/physics oriented to me. But I'm sure there's a couple of people out there that love this stuff. I'd like to see a history or evolution of poles.