Gatorade
Vigorous Exercise
Dr. Matt Hermes

Sports Science

Rehydration

Energy  Replacement

Quiz

Problems

Steve Spurrier in 1966

It was the summer of 1965. On the practice fields of Gainsville, Florida University coach Ray Graves watched his athletes walk slowly through their drills. To the side, his quarterback, Steve Spurrier - a young man with enormous talent that Graves rightly expected would one day win the Heisman Trophy - stood alone and tossed ball after ball through a tire suspended 30 yards away.

Steve Spurrier in 2002

"Are they drinking water?" the team doctor asked.

"Well, we have water for them. Yeah, they drink a little bit of it." The coach said.

"What else do you do?" the doctor asked.

"We make them take salt tablets because they sweat so much salt."

"Do you give them juice? Orange juice?" the doctor said.

"They guzzle the juice when we give it to them. Then they throw up. Same thing with soft drinks. They get cramps and get sick."

"We think we can help, coach. We think we can make you a drink the team will like and that will let them tolerate the heat," said the team doctor. His name was Dana Shires. He was then a young physician working as a research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Cade.

Acknowledgment: 
Dr. Dana Shires, one of the inventors of Gatorade was extremely helpful in the preparation of this unit.

Chemical Concepts:
Here are some concepts of solution chemistry that the inventors of Gatorade used in developing the sports drink:

We will see how Dr. Cade and his associate researchers used these simple chemical concepts to invent and develop Gatorade and we will use these principles ourselves to evaluate and decide on issues of testing and ownership of Gatorade