olympic calendar

Wheelchair rugby is gearing up to the medal events on Sunday. If you placed a player of this impressive game next to a physics professor you probably wouldn't have much trouble spotting who's who. Yet, there's an intriguing connection between rugby and one of the more puzzling areas of physics.

Generally, football fans can be a rowdy a lot and that's something you've got to think about when building a football venue. Imagine the 80,000 people that fit into a stadium like Wembley jumping up and down in unison to We will rock you. Any structure, no matter how solid, has its own natural frequency at which it likes to vibrate, and if that happens to be in tune with the people's, you can end up with a dangerous sway and ultimate disaster.

One thing that's characterised the London 2012 Games is its great atmosphere — and that's largely down to the tens of thousands of volunteers who've donated their time, effort and enthusiasm to the Games. For most of them this will probably be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But it's also possible to be part of big sporting events like this one and earn money at the same time...

Relay races are exciting to watch, but for coaches and athletes they pose a particular conundrum: in what order should the athletes be deployed — should the fastest come first, last, or somewhere in the middle?

Today we say a fond farewell to the velodrome after the final track cycling events on the weekend. From Sarah Storey's first gold for Great Britain on Thursday to the cat-and-mouse gold medal game between compatriots Anthony Kappes and Neil Fachie of the Individual B Sprint yesterday, it has been a fabulous show. To celebrate we calculate just how Storey and her fellow cyclists are able to reach such astonishing speeds in Gearing up for gold.

The Olympic Stadium and the Aquatics Centre are taking centre stage again as medals are being awarded in both athletics and swimming. Not any old pool or running track qualifies as an Olympic venue...

Wheelchair racing is one of the most exciting disciplines in the Paralympics. And it's not just a wheel-based equivalent of Olympic racing: John D. Barrow, mathematician, cosmologist and prolific popular science writer, has spotted an important difference.

If the Olympics weren't enough for you, then you're in for another elevn days of top-performance sport: the Paralympic Games will open tonight.

The beautiful game has been saved for last at London 2012, with the men's gold medal match taking place on Saturday, the penultimate day of the Games. There are some important questions to ponder while we sit tight in anticipation for the final match. What's the best strategy for taking a penalty kick? When is it worth committing a professional foul? And when is a goal not a goal? Find out about all this and more with our impressive collection of football articles.

It's a great day for individual dressage today with the Grand Prix freestyle test taking place in Greenwich Park. It's amazing how those horses can perform elegant and complicated movements without getting their legs in a muddle. Coming to think of it, it's amazing that they can even go through their innate gaits without getting their legs in a muddle, given that there's four of them and they are very long. And what about animals who've got even more legs?

Today the men's table tennis teams will be battling for gold. Table tennis first became an Olympic sport in 1988, but changed its scoring system in 2001 to make matches more exciting for spectators. But how do the old and new scoring systems compare in terms of favouring skill versus luck?

It's the very last medal day for track cycling! If you've been watching, you might have noticed the steep banks of the elegant wooden cycling track. And you may have been impressed by the sweeping curved roof and beautiful cedar clad exterior of the Velodrome, the first of the 2012 London Olympic venues to be completed.