A starting pistol in use at an East German athletics competition in 1961.
A gun is used to start sprinters, instead of a flash, because you can react faster to a bang than to a flash. This behavioral fact has been known since the 1880s and in recent decades has been corroborated by physiology: the cells in your auditory cortex can change their firing rate more quickly in response to a bang than your visual cortex cells can in response to a flash.
Oh, oh, I have some questions on a specific situation! There was a deaf swimmer named Marcus Titus in the most recent Olympic swim trials and he was signaled with a flash of light instead of a gun. Does this mean that he could have been at a disadvantage because his visual cortex cells respond slower than the other swimmers’ auditory cortex cells? But light travels faster than sound, so could that factor in as well? Or (I don’t know how long he has been deaf) is it possible for his vision to have adapted somehow to respond quicker than non-deaf people?
Based on the neurophysiology of it, yes, he would have been at an disadvantage (had they not corrected for this discrepancy).
Light of course travels faster than sound, but over the distance which the light and sound travel (the pool), the differences in speed are indistinguishable to us. If the starting gun were fired half a mile away, for example, then there would be a noticeable difference.
I can’t speak to whether or not his visual system adapted to this synchronization problem.
Awesome! Thanks, Kyle!
I always thought it was so that they didn’t have to crank their necks to look up for a flash bulb. Plus on those really bright, sunny outdoor days…
That’s a good reason too Steve, but there is actually some science behind the choice between the two. I thought it was too fascinating not to share.
That’s interesting because back when I did competitive swimming, we had both a flash and a buzzer setup and I would always notice and at least seem to react to the flash faster than to the buzzer.