Slashdot Mirror
The Physics of Football
Ponca City, We Love You writes "There will be a program on applied physics and real time strategy that you might want to watch on television today. Conservation of momentum during elastic and inelastic collisions is one aspect on which to focus as players tackle their opponents. It is of critical importance that the Patriots bring down New York's huge and powerful running back, 6-foot-4, 265-pound Brandon Jacobs. An average-size NFL defensive back's mass combined with his speed — on average, 4.56 seconds for the 40-yard dash — can produce up to 1600 pounds of tackling force. A tackle with half a ton of force may sound like a crippling blow, but the body can handle twice that amount because the player's equipment spreads out the incoming energy, lessening its severity."
Nanotech specialists from Cornell have developed their own take on the "physics" of the Super Bowl by creating the world's smallest trophy, which will be awarded today to a contestant who best explains an aspect of football physics. Just some food for thought while you watch the game on your brand new HD television, though you'd better not be watching it in a church.
Momentum = Mass * Velocity Brandon Jacobs is HUGE and runs very fast.
For those who want to view the submissions, all submissions are uploaded to youtube with the tag "nanobowl".
As an European I'd like to point out that the article is not about football but about some strange American sport where the foot isn't even used (or at least not that often,I have no idea to be honest).
While we're on the topic, check out the clip of Brandon Jacobs opening up a can on whup-ass in the first play of the game two weeks ago in Green Bay. Note 265 lbs of running-back muscle flattens the tiny little corner-back. :-)
There is a show called 'Sport Science' on Fox Sports where they take all these extreme athletes of all types of sports in America like NBA, NFL, NHL, I.R.L., softball, soccer, billards and it goes on. The text article is nice but they provide so much more info on the show and visual demonstrations with great players like Jerry Rice, Ben Roathlisberger
The MMA one is a really interesting one when you have Bas Rutten making the scientest jaws drop with the amount of pressure they hit a target. One hit I remember broke the 1000lbs of force and they were telling these guys that they are throwing concussion hits.
Good episodes like...
Human Flight: Who Are The Highest Flyers in Sports?
Sudden Impact: Who Hits the Hardest in Sports?
Reaction Time: Who Reacts the Fastest in Sports?
Cheap Shots: What does a Cheap Shot feel like in Sports?
Out of Control: Elements of the Game you can't Control
England could do with some of those guys in their rugby team, assuming they don't mind playing without helmets and body armour - oh, and multi-million pound/dollar sponsorship deals...
So no chance then.
I cant wait till its over so everyone will shut up about it.
What channel is it on? BBC1? BBC2?
You're using her as bait, Master!
I know there's a bunch of really good commercials showing up on YouTube today, but I didn't know that there was a football game today.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
I will be conducting a careful study of wave propagation through viscous silicone mediums subject to oscillating vertical acceleration.
Have gnu, will travel.
I, for one, will be getting fast downloads during the game. I'll be receiving an 15-20 Mbps MPEG-TS stream (after conversion) containing the live game broadcast from my antenna.
Of course, the Patriots won't need an asterisk if the Giants somehow pull off the un-thinkable this evening.
The majority of native English speakers are American. So to most of the English speaking world, football is the game played with the oblong ball and soccer is the one with the round one. If you insist on using a minority dialect of English you should really stop being so sensitive when the majority doesn't use it.
That whooshing sound was the joke going over the moderators, and other posters, heads.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Yes but the majority of the non English speaking World also use the word "football" or some variant thereof to refer to soccer rather than the pansy version of rugby that you use to stop the advertising breaks from running together.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
And this is what half a tonne of force looks like without the protective gear.
The Patriots had broken a rule that had recently been explicitly laid out by the league. (See article).
Pats fan here. Yes, the Patriots broke the rules and were punished for it, but let's put this into perspective:
The Pats got in trouble for #3, not #1 & 2.
Of course #3 apparently contradicts league guidance on shooting from end zone positions ("but there are no restrictions on shooting from both upper end zone positions as long as the opportunity is provided to both teams") which apparently means there is some room for interpretation.
And c'mon... did they REALLY need to cheat against the Jets? The 4-12 Jets? You would think that wiser head couches would save their cheating for games against stronger teams.The incident happened in the first half of the first game of the '07 season. In the prior year, the Jets were a playoff team that beat the Patriots in November '06 (which I remember because I was there). There was every reason to expect that the Jets would have been a strong contender this past season.
Then think of how many languages are spoken in India, there are 22 official languages.
I personally worked for a paint factory that manufactured the paint that goes on the helmets(Yes,the NFLs helmets made by RYDELL).The problem we were overcoming was the old paint weakened the strength of the helmets causing splits and cracks.Our method of test consisted of 10 ft. of 4inch PVC duct taped to a pillar.At the bottom of the pillar,a box,little bigger than the helmet w/4 inches of foam rubber.The helmet sat in the box and two 10 lb.sledgehammer heads duct taped together were dropped to dent the helmet upon which it was inspected for cracks or splits radiating from the dent.The old paint wouldn't withstand a single hammer head.Ours withstood both in the end.
Cost of research,less than $50 U.S. Scienterrific,huh?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I really do like your analysis, Reverberant, but I also want you to know that your "perfect" Patriots are overdue for a loss (that's as close to a flame war as I will get on Superbowl Sunday).
;-)
Also, did you know that Hitler is a Cowboys fan?
Really, why do you guys play it Sunday evenining? It'd make way more sense to play on Saturdays - then you could all stay up late and get real pissed. Plus, then those of us who live in Europe could join in the fun.
Heck, after England's second half performance against Wales, I needed something to cheer me up. Superbowl would have been perfect.
I agree. It makes having a party for the game with me, my wife, and 10 of our closest friends, on our 55.9 inch screen (so as to not run afoul of the No Fun League's lawyers) pretty difficult.
I think it's just done on Sunday because Sunday is traditionally pro football day.
Actually, looking at the incredible amount of "flamebait" and "troll" moderations on posts critical of American Football, it is both obvious that not only does a lot of slashdotters see american football, but they're stupid as hell too.
Note: I shall not take a view on the pansiness of American Football myself as, in my opinion, if you play either sport you are a) not a pansy and b) need your head examined.
To clarify what was said in http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=440450&cid=22284928 about "pro" day:
American football takes place on both Saturdays and Sundays during the football seasons (~September thru ~ January). College football is played on Saturdays, and professional (mostly synonymous with NFL) football is played on Sundays. High school football is played on Friday nights. The NFL season ends later than the college season, so indeed Saturdays are free for pro football starting in December and the NFL holds playoff games on both Saturdays and Sundays. The NFL also has a single "featured" game on Monday nights, and some Thursdays too of late.
As far as the effects of after-game celebration the day after: people seem to get away with a lot on Monday-After-Superbowl as it's often considered a day of amnesty by the cultural magnitude the event has. "The Superbowl" is no longer just a game, but a massive cultural event in this country that far transcends the sport and its followers. Superbowl Sunday is a holiday in all but official name.
Maybe I'm doing the math wrong, but I've always been led to believe that 1600 pounds is a hell of a lot more than half a ton. In fact, it's 60% more than half.
Anyone wanna tell me what I'm missing in that summary?
I don't understand why people compare the two, the types of tackles between Union and American Football are completly diffrent and they have completly diffrent rules. Hence why one has helmets and padding and the other one doesn't.
If you haven't seen it, his classic try against England in 95.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
They just spout the same old bullshit arguments about how:
1) American Football is misnamed.
2) It's a wussy game (woo rugby)
3) It's for retards.
4) Too many breaks
5) Companies spend a lot of money on marketing THEY ARE EVIL HURRRR
I'm not going to address these comments because they are loaded or strawmen and others have done it better than me. I think it's great. It's a lot of fun to watch and talk about, and I hope the Giants win today. The rest of you haters can go back to whatever the hell you were doing.
Oooh the Tuck of the Giants just got an interception! WOOOO
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I don't know... I hate this. I love American Football, but here in Germany, its 2 am. and I have to work tomorrow. This sux. :D
PS: Patriots will win
I always thought of American football more as a turn-based strategy than RTS -- after all, there's a break after every play and each team gets to choose their next move before they try it out. Stuff like soccer or hockey feels much more 'RTS' to me with the constant motion back and forth, and being a turn-based fan, perhaps that's the reason I enjoy watching American football more than most other team sports.
If it was Saturday we Hasidic Jews couldn't turn on our TVs, you insensitive clod!
Its a game of strategy and anticipation, as well as skill, reflexes, teamwork, liability, physic, and everyone can pretty much find a useful position on it regardless of your body build. Its very popular once you understand it. Theres a lot of European trolls it seems that get pretty pissed when its "misnamed" (mind you that there is canadian football and australian football as well, and the game was originally very running centric) or because they think the draw of the sport is two people running into each other. Its good that these people are modded trolls and flamebait, because hopefully these people will learn to speak on topics that they actually know about, rather than spout out shit as if they actually have experience. Imagine these same people talking on other (non-sport) topics criticizing someone else's idea much in the same way.
And they do fit the roll of the troll or flamebait because they incite a response by trying to piss people off.
Like you.
Witty, but I don't know whether you intentionally missed the point for the sake of it or whether you're actually confused, so I'll bite.
His point was that rugby fans call football rugby for pussies, but rugby players who actually attempt to play football are quickly relegated to being backups or put at positions that demand very little skill because they're unfit to play the rest. No one said that the only rugby players that play football are pussies, just that rugby players lack the skill, size, or speed, to play football.
If you feel like doing a little wikipedia reading, back when Rugby was an Olympic sport the entire US team was generally just some football players they rounded up before the games, and they were incredibly successful.
+1 Prescient! W00t w00t!
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
That YouTube Hitler video was good. I like when he says, "At least I can still see the Patriots make history with a perfect season."
And in your other reply to me, you said "if the Giants can do the unthinkable." Well... I've been saying for about two months that the Patriots are a one dimension team (that dimension, being "Passing"). Ask Peyton Manning how great it was to have a one dimensional team in 2004. Sure, he got 49 TD passes in the regular season, but none in the second round of the playoffs and the Colts were beaten easily by the Patriots 20-3... to be knocked out of the playoffs.
So yeah... one dimensional teams are beatable.
Then again, hindsight is 20/20 and in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl I wouldn't have run my mouth to badly out of fear of embarrassment of being ultimately proved wrong. But I must say, being proved right is grand!
btw... real Giants fan here.
Of course, I'll probably get modded Flamebait again for talking Football on a "News for Nerds" site... so I will at least point out that I am typing this from a laptop running Ubuntu (you know, to appease the mods).
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Incredibly successful ? They beat the one other country who had entered - France.
As to the parents point about rugby players making only mediocre American Football players; like duh ! What do you expect they've spent most of their lives playing a totally different code of sport of course they're not going to be as skilled in some of the more specialist positions than players who have spent all their lives simply training for that position. Having said that they do seem to be more successful than the American Football players who convert to Rugby. And lastly how much have American Football teams offered Johnny Wilkinson to come and kick for them ?
Not to mention American football player are bigger, faster, stronger and more skilled.
Does most popular mean most watched? I thought a different 'sport' had that title? The one where some people drive 'cars' really fast around tracks. And a lot of poeple weatch it at the track and on TV.
Other then the commercial or news highlight I have yet to actually watch nascar or any other kind of car race (morning/evening rush hour does not count) I thought it was title the most watched sport in the world?
Most popular == most watched?
or
Most popular == most money made by a sport?