Question

An athlete runs a certain distance before taking a long jump. Why?

Answer 1

Hint: The law of conservation of energy, the inertia of motion, Newton’s first law of motion, and the momentum are the concepts that help to answer this question, as these concepts cover the topics like the transformation of one energy to the other while conserving the total energy.

Complete step-by-step solution:
Inertia helps the body to keep on moving at a constant speed, even when no external force acts upon that body.
The inertia of motion helps an athlete to gain the momentum that would help him to take a long jump.
As momentum is the product of mass and velocity, gain in momentum refers to the increase in velocity.
The faster the velocity of an athlete the higher the jump he makes.
According to Newton’s first law of motion, a body tends to remain in its initial position (at rest or in motion) until and unless compelled by an external force.
This external force is gained by an athlete by running for a certain distance horizontally, in turn, which increases the kinetic energy of that athlete.
This horizontally acting kinetic energy gets converted to the potential energy when the athlete makes a vertical jump, thus helping that athlete make a long jump and cover a wider distance.
Here the first law of thermodynamics, that is, the law of conservation of energy also plays an important role, as the kinetic energy gained by the athlete gets converted
to the potential energy (transformation of one energy to the other takes place), thus the total energy remains conserved/constant.
Jumping after running for a certain distance covers more length than that of jumping without running.
An athlete runs a certain distance before taking a long jump to gain the momentum that would help him/her to cover a longer distance.

Note: The things to be on your finger-tips for further information on solving these types of problems are: The athlete runs to gain some energy that would help him/her to make a long jump that covers a longer distance. While jumping without running won’t help the athlete to cover a longer distance.