Some ideas for Lauren:
mybffnastia asked me to physics. So here are some physics I guess.
Okay, here's a fun fact about torque. It's... frustrating. I've always found it one of the most difficult concepts in physics, certainly in mechanics, and I've put a lot of what I knew about it aside as it's really not a thing in chemE.
Also, vault is really quite poorly suited to discussions without getting heavy on the biomechanics because, in spite of being the quickest event, physically it's one of the most complicated. Everything happens so quickly and is so cross-dependent that it's difficult to isolate anything after the takeoff for the board. The gymnast punches, drives her heels and blocks off the vault almost as one action, and the mechanics are as much dependent upon her shoulders and back or abs as they are the pure physics with the gymnast considered as a point body or simple object.
With that said, there are some decently simple isolations you can do that relate to angular momentum, the conservation thereof, and torque.
1) Entries. Straight entries (Yurchenko, handspring) are more powerful than twisting entries (Y 1/2 and full on, tsuk, hand full on). The twist of the entry robs angular momentum from the flip of the vault because the axes of these rotations are ideally at normal. Note that for accurate comparison you have to go by the direction of the block, not the direction on the springboard, as it affects the vault in an unrelated way- Yurchenkos, tsuks and Y 1/1s are considered back, handsprings, Y 1/2s and hand full ons are considered front. To simplify as much as possible I'd probably do FTY versus Y full on full off (FOFO? as both of these entries are still competed, whereas hand full on has kinda gone the way of Korbut.)
2) This concept can also be applied to the flight of the vault- you'd have to use men's as the example, but twisting double salto vaults are more difficult than twisting single salto vaults. This is not just due to having to fit an extra salto in, but also to the fact that the twist robs the salto of momentum and makes it more difficult to get around.
3) You can compare body positions- how the more vertically compact tuck makes flipping easier, but the more horizontally compact (relative to its other dimesions) layout makes twisting easier. This is related to the r in t=rxF BUT it's also got a lot to do with the gymnast's ability to generate force (F) which is related to this one and this gets way complicated and probably isn't the best for a 5 min presentation.
4) You can talk about how gymnasts control their twisting. Specifically, when a powerful gymnast does a vault that's easy for her, she will throw out her arms in a T or inverted V as her twist ends to slow it down. Observe on Kim Zmeskal's (STELLAR) FTY. This spreads out the gymnast's mass, which affects the moment of inertia in the rotation (essentially turning her from a point object to a rigid rotor if you consider only the two dimensions in which the rotation occurs.)
I'm not going to write the lesson plan for you or anything because that's your job (and likely soon to be your JOB job), but hopefully one of these will give you a starting point from which you can build a good lesson. Good luck!











