{"id":652,"date":"2012-08-03T13:57:52","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T17:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/?p=652"},"modified":"2012-08-07T10:50:52","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T14:50:52","slug":"just-how-speedy-is-sound-at-the-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/archives\/652","title":{"rendered":"Just how speedy is sound at the Olympics?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it turns out not fast enough!\u00a0 Years ago, in addition to a traditional starters pistol, Olympic officials started placing loudspeakers behind the athletes so that the sound would reach each athlete at the same time.\u00a0 It turned out however that the athletes would continue to wait for the sound from the actual starters pistol to arrive.\u00a0 Even with the loudspeakers, the speed of sound was still slowing down the athletes furthest from the starter pistol.\u00a0 While we are talking about tiny fractions of a second, with Olympic runners and swimmers, it really makes a difference.\u00a0 Starting at the Vancouver winter games and this summer in London, they are using a silent pistol that is completely electronic and generates a beep from the loudspeakers only (although it does make a flash).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/12\/07\/the-speed-of-sound-is-too-slow-for-olympic-athletes\/260413\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.theatlantic.com\/static\/mt\/assets\/science\/omega110.jpg\" alt=\"omega110.jpg\" width=\"130\" height=\"187\" \/><\/a> \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sport\/olympics\/article-2146364\/London-2012-Olympics-Starting-pistol-big-play.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2012\/05\/18\/article-0-0D9B278F00000578-27_468x350.jpg\" alt=\"False start: Usain Bolt was caught out in Daegu last summer\" width=\"250\" height=\"187\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>[<em>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/12\/07\/the-speed-of-sound-is-too-slow-for-olympic-athletes\/260413\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Atlantic<\/a>,\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sport\/olympics\/article-2146364\/London-2012-Olympics-Starting-pistol-big-play.html\" target=\"_blank\">dailymail.co.uk<\/a><\/em>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it turns out not fast enough!\u00a0 Years ago, in addition to a traditional starters pistol, Olympic officials started placing loudspeakers behind the athletes so that the sound would reach each athlete at the same time.\u00a0 It turned out however that the athletes would continue to wait for the sound from the actual starters pistol [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,4],"tags":[40,33,58],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-events","tag-hearing","tag-speakers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665,"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lallyacoustics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}