Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Football Physics and Deflategate

This issue doesn't seem to want to go away.

Still, anyone who has been following this (at least here in the US) have heard of the "Deflategate" controversy from last year's NFL Football playoffs.

Chad Orzel has another look at this based on a recent paper out of The Physics Teacher, this time, from the physics involved with the football receivers.

Most of the coverage of “Deflategate” has focused on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and speculation that he arranged for the balls to be deflated so as to provide a better grip. The authors of the Physics Teacher paper, Gregory DiLisi and Richard Rarick look at the other end of the problem, where the ball is caught by the receiver, thinking about it in terms of energy, an issue with major implications for the existence of atomic matter.

It certainly is another angle to the issue. I hope to get a copy of the paper soon and see what it says.

Zz.

No comments: