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Last night I listed to a radio program from National Public Radio called Radiolab. The program was called Speed and it covered science experiments, nerve impulses, the stock market, and how physicists have slowed light down to a crawling speed. The show covered some fantastic stuff. But, the part about nerve impulses really caught my eye (or ear). If you want to listen to the program its free and can be streamed from this site.
http://www.radiolab.org/story/267124-speed/
Tennis is a fast sport very fast and we take for granted how miraculous it is that we can actually play this sport. For instance, we depend on our sense of sight and sense of touch to play tennis. However, it is fascinating that the nerve impulses we use to see and hit the ball are in some cases slower then the ball. The speed of nerve impulses can range anywhere from 1 miles per hour to 200 miles per hour. With the fastest nerve impulses related to hearing and the slowest related to pain and pleasure. Our muscles nerve fibers fire between 60 and 200 mph.
Now 200 mph may seem fast but if you think about how many steps the brain has to go through to hit a tennis ball this nerve impulse delay adds up to fractions of a second. In a sport where you may only have a fraction of a second to begin with waiting for your nerves to communicate with each other takes the lion share of the time.
hear is a link that talks about nerve impulse speed.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/DavidParizh.shtml
http://www.radiolab.org/story/267124-speed/
Tennis is a fast sport very fast and we take for granted how miraculous it is that we can actually play this sport. For instance, we depend on our sense of sight and sense of touch to play tennis. However, it is fascinating that the nerve impulses we use to see and hit the ball are in some cases slower then the ball. The speed of nerve impulses can range anywhere from 1 miles per hour to 200 miles per hour. With the fastest nerve impulses related to hearing and the slowest related to pain and pleasure. Our muscles nerve fibers fire between 60 and 200 mph.
Now 200 mph may seem fast but if you think about how many steps the brain has to go through to hit a tennis ball this nerve impulse delay adds up to fractions of a second. In a sport where you may only have a fraction of a second to begin with waiting for your nerves to communicate with each other takes the lion share of the time.
hear is a link that talks about nerve impulse speed.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/DavidParizh.shtml
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