Doing a project relating calculus II and gymnastics

[crazytumbler9]

Okay so our calculus professor has given us an assignment to do a project involving calculus. He found out that I was a gymnast and liked physics so he said that my project should relate calculus, physics, and gymnastics.

I'm having problems coming up with an idea in which I can actually measure what the variables I need for equations. Also it needs to be able to relate ideas from calc. II. Any ideas would be a huge help.

 

[Count Iblis]

You could explore rotational motion. Study the theory of the motion of a rigid body:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler's_equations_(rigid_body_dynamics [Broken])

And then generalize this to the case of a gymnast whose moment of inertia tensor will be time dependent.