A Certain Brand of Character, Eh?

They say that it takes a certain brand of character to pole vault. A certain brand of character to carry a hefty, ten-foot-some pole, book it like a criminal down a runway, and fly up to the height of a two-story window. Yet, despite the craziness, pole vaulting works. The world record is a whopping 6.14 meters (about 20 feet, 2 inches), held since 1994 by the formidable Ukrainian, Sergey Bubka.

So what makes it possible to soar to new heights with nothing at hand but a carbon fiber pole? The idea behind pole vault is the conversion of kinetic energy to potential energy-- the vaulter turns kinetic energy (horizontal ground speed), into potential energy (height). As for how the pole assists the vaulter with this...

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Of course, the diagram is missing the part in which the vaulter plummets back to earth with an acceleration of 9.81 meters per second squared (gravity), but that part is slightly more self-explanatory.

The above freeze-frame diagram illustrates the progression of the vault and how the pole bends and unbends to catapult the vaulter up and over the crossbar. The dent that the vaulter sticks his pole into is called the box, and in real life appears like so:

Yes, technically, the box isn't actually a box. It's a slightly trapezoidal indentation in the ground that consists of a sloping bottom and a vertical back wall to stop the horizontal motion of the pole... cold turkey. The box is eight inches deep, which is sometimes loved and sometimes hated by pole vaulters... Loved when 10 feet high is actually 10 feet 8 inches, and hated when the airheaded vaulter receives a thorough ankle-spraining.

Stay tuned, and light will soon be shed on the many remaining mysteries of pole vaulting.