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Science at the Olympics? Our First eBook Can Explain

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Scientific American, The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics, eBook


The Olympics is the world s greatest athletic event. Men and women run, swim, dive, lift, vault, serve, swing, kick and play against one another until a champion is crowned, in sport after sport. But what separates each champion from his or her competitors, who are all elite athletes themselves?

To answer that and many other questions, Scientific American is introducing its first eBook, The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. It has more than 30 chapters organized into eight sections that reveal the science and some scandal behind athletic achievement. It explores the psychology of what s going on inside a champion s mind during training and competition, explains cutting edge therapies that can prevent and repair injuries, reveals the genes, hormones and brain structures that allow certain individuals to push human limits, and looks at the cat-and-mouse games that are sometimes played between athletes who are trying to cheat with drugs and officials who are trying to catch them. The eBook also presents a final section of advice for all of us on how to be fit and healthy. Having organized the book, I can say that some of the insights in that section alone were surprising.


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The eBook is available in a variety of formats, including those for the Kindle from Amazon, the iBook from Apple, the Nook from Barnes & Noble, and the Reader from Sony. Let us know what you think. And if you have an idea for another eBook, tell us that, too; hearing from the world s science enthusiasts makes us a better team.

Mark Fischetti has been a senior editor at Scientific American for 17 years and has covered sustainability issues, including climate, weather, environment, energy, food, water, biodiversity, population, and more. He assigns and edits feature articles, commentaries and news by journalists and scientists and also writes in those formats. He edits History, the magazine's department looking at science advances throughout time. He was founding managing editor of two spinoff magazines: Scientific American Mind and Scientific American Earth 3.0. His 2001 freelance article for the magazine, "Drowning New Orleans," predicted the widespread disaster that a storm like Hurricane Katrina would impose on the city. His video What Happens to Your Body after You Die?, has more than 12 million views on YouTube. Fischetti has written freelance articles for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian, Technology Review, Fast Company, and many others. He co-authored the book Weaving the Web with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, which tells the real story of how the Web was created. He also co-authored The New Killer Diseases with microbiologist Elinor Levy. Fischetti is a former managing editor of IEEE Spectrum Magazine and of Family Business Magazine. He has a physics degree and has twice served as the Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture at Centenary College of Louisiana, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2021 he received the American Geophysical Union's Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism, which celebrates a career of outstanding reporting on the Earth and space sciences. He has appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, CNN, the History Channel, NPR News and many news radio stations. Follow Fischetti on X (formerly Twitter) @markfischetti

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