Courses:

Topics covered in this course are available in the calendar below.

We are starting a new seminar this spring that will help students relate the Chemistry GIR (General Institute Requirement) to sports! In this pilot experiment we will be focusing on three sports, swimming, cycling and running. There will be two components to the seminar, a classroom and a laboratory.

The classroom component will introduce the students to the chemistry of their own biological system. We will be looking at nutrition (to understand how to fuel and rebuild your body), anatomy and physiology (to better build your system) and also how the body can be improved (or hurt) through physical activities. To better understand the three sports, we will examine the chemistry of equipment and the event, including: swimming (wetsuit making, swimsuit manufacturing, how chlorine affects you), bicycling (including a field trip to a bicycle shop), and running (hopefully including a guest speaker to come and talk to us about how running shoes are manufactured). We will also look at ways your body deals with exercise through building up and repair of muscles, improvement in lung and cardiovascular capacity and the chemistry of supplements and their effectiveness.

Since we are looking at swimming, running and cycling as our sample sports, we will apply the classroom knowledge to complete a triathlon. Students will earn PE (physical education) credits if post-seminar they complete the Mooseman Triathlon (either the Olympic for 2 PE credits or half-Ironman for 4 PE credits) in New Hampshire in early June. We will be having a pre-and post cardiovascular, body mass index (BMI), and maximal oxygen uptake (VO2) testing as well as a general fitness evaluation done at the Z center. With some help from some guest triathlete speakers, we will provide sample 16-week training schedules to help the students complete their PE credit.

This plans on being an exciting way for students to study and apply chemistry knowledge to the improvement of their biological systems.

• Apply the principles of chemistry to studying sports. These principles include: atomic and molecular interactions, thermodynamics, acid/base chemistry, bonding, electrochemistry
  
  
• There will be weekly reading of scientific literature related to the topic of the week
  
  
• Understand the chemistry of their own biological system through observations written in a training journal
  
  
• Study the science of a triathlon (swim, bike, run) from molecular/chemical/biological point of view
  
  
• Improve your own personal fitness level by training for the Mooseman triathlon (either Olympic distance or half-Ironman) and earn PE credit or by maintaining you own exercise program.
  

This 6 unit seminar is pass/fail. Extra 2 units or 4 units of PE credit are available if you complete either the Olympic or Half-Ironman Mooseman Triathlon.

Part of research is to document your experiments. Since you are using your own body as the experimental device, you need to document how the experiment is going. You will keep a training journal throughout the term. Please see assignments for more detailed instructions.

For any use or distribution of these materials, please cite as follows:

Patti Christie, course materials for SP.235 Chemistry of Sports, Spring 2007. MIT OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu/), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Downloaded on [DD Month YYYY].