As Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt runs today for his second gold medal of the London Olympic Games, many spectators wonder: how does he go so fast? Mechanical engineering professor Anette Hosoi offers some insight in a Q&A with MIT News and in a series of videos for NBC Learn’s “Science of the Summer Olympics.”  “[T]he amazing thing about Usain Bolt, the thing that sets him apart, is his stride length, which is almost 10 feet,” she says. (By comparison, Hosoi found that her own stride was half that long.) Hosoi, whose field is fluid mechanics, also explains what makes a “fast pool” for competitors, helping the likes of Michael Phelps set world records.

Explore Professor Hosoi’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.