Source: Alamy

Get a grip: lessons from a practitioner demonstrate it¡¯s all about friction

A Sheffield scientist has found a way to make his subject more accessible by delivering a talk on ¡°physics, feminism and pole dancing¡±.

Matthew Mears, a teaching fellow in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Sheffield, tackled the subjects for a charity event called Inspiration for Life, held last month in memory of the Sheffield physicist Tim Richardson. Dr Richardson, who in 2011 put on a gruelling 24-hour lecture marathon for Children in Need, died of cancer, aged only 48, last year.

Inspiration for Life consisted of 48 successive half-hour talks by academics. ¡°It was mostly quite light-hearted,¡± Dr Mears recalled, ¡°with experts talking about how to be a 16th-century Roman spy or someone from the fertility clinic talking about their experiences. There¡¯s usually a personal touch about why we do our work.¡±

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Since a friend introduced him to it two years ago, Dr Mears has himself become an enthusiast for pole fitness training but has also got used to being asked questions such as ¡°Is it just people shaking themselves and gyrating round a pole?¡± and ¡°Do you work at Spearmint Rhino?¡±.

In reality, he said, he is taught by an accredited professional in a licensed studio and ¡°has never met anyone who does it for fitness who also works as a stripper or at a gentlemen¡¯s club¡±. It was this that gave him the idea for his ¡°Spinny Science¡± talk.

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Physics, he told the audience, can help us answer the questions: ¡°How do pole dancers move so fast?¡± and ¡°How do they not fall off?¡± But what could it contribute to the ¡°fitness versus sexualisation¡± debate, as exemplified by the 2013 row over whether to ban a student pole fitness society at Swansea University because of claims that the activity was ¡°inextricably linked¡± to the sex industry. After all, ¡°if pole dancing isn¡¯t sexual, why is there so much skin on show?¡±

In response to that challenge, Dr?Mears asked: ¡°Can first-year physics provide a possible explanation?¡± He displayed a series of equations demonstrating that ¡°the coefficient of static friction describes the maximum retardation force before an object can slide¡±.

And, just in case that wasn¡¯t clear enough, he also ¡°asked a first-year physics student who had never done it before to demonstrate friction ¨C climbing the pole with gloves ¨C and spinning. He¡¯s a bit of a joker in lectures anyway, and was more than happy to make a fool of himself.¡±

All this, Dr Mears¡¯ talk concluded, only went to show that ¡°skin provides better friction than clothing¡­With a bit of physics knowledge, we can see that pole dancing may not be as sexualised as it first seems.¡±

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matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com