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NFL Asks Columbia University For Help With Deflate-Gate
An anonymous reader writes with news that the NFL has reached out for some help answering the questions raised by deflate-gate. "Yep, it's for real. The law firm representing the NFL (Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison) has reached out to Columbia University's department of physics to recruit an expert on 'gas physics' to help determine, as has been reported, the 'environmental impacts on inflated footballs.' This is one of those rare times when the jocks turn to the nerds, so fellow fans of molecules and momentum — climb out of that gym locker you were stuffed into — this is our moment. Stand tall. And do the wave....They want to talk to a physicist, I presume, to help determine if a drop in temperature — a slowing of the air molecules inside the football — can explain the low pressure that was found in some of the balls used in the A.F.C. championship game two weeks ago between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts."
The problem with describing what happens when a ball cools isn't about the gas inside it; that's well understood. The problem is that the container is also affected by temperature and leather is a complicated material. The best answer here is to do a bunch of experiments, not a bunch of calculations.
Oh, dear alma mater, must you get involved in these stupid shenanigans? How about you stick with real science and leave the sensational crap to Geraldo?
i think i might stop reading slashdot
done.
Commercial test labs do this type of work on a daily basis. Not rocked sciense, so don't know what a University offers.
Every 9-year-old kid who plays basketball outside in winter can tell the NFL that temperature affects air pressure. Whether this is the sole factor at work here, is another question.
...why the other team's game balls remained properly inflated...given they were undergoing similar circumstances (weather, handling, use, etc).
Impetuous! Homeric!
I may have been a nerd, but I was the one stuffing kids into the lockers!
I'm not a football fan but one cannot avoid hearing about "deflategate"
However my understanding is that they both measure the pressure and the weight of the ball. The temperature difference will account for the pressure decrease however the balls should still weigh the same. The claims were what - 11 of the balls were underweight?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Where do I go to complain about people sticking "-gate" onto the end of every scandal?
What? They're afraid MIT is full of Pats fans?
'gas physicists', Neil deGrasse Tyson. In a Jan 26th tweet he states, "For the Patriots to blame a change in temperature for 15% lower-pressures, requires balls to be inflated with 125-degree air." Full article here: http://uproxx.com/sports/2015/...
So if you use the balls the Colts used as a control group what do you get. The control group didn't deflate with the weather and the Patriot's balls did. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
haters gotta hate; maybe everyone on here arguing about balls should read the latest press release from the NFL.
go Pats!
... is why you keep adding "gate" to everything. That'd be a question worth the attention of our top scientists.
Agreed. Anyone can put a football out in the cold, or in a refrigerator, and see what happens. Columbia's role is credibility, to authoratively say how much pressure drop is attributable to temperature.
It's Sports Nerds asking Science Nerds. Doesn't make any of them less nerdy.
No further questions!
If you're doing the Wave, you deserve to get stuffed back in that locker. Or worse.
As far as Deflate Gate goes, in the end it won't matter. The Hawks are going to walk all over the Pats. The only real question is whether they'll hit any of the numbers I drew in our office pool.
#DeleteChrome
Full bullshit ahead !!
It takes an expert in "gas physics" to explain the ideal gas law to them? Didn't these lawyers have to take a basic physics or chemistry course in their undergrad coursework?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The National Felons League (an organization of Billionaire Team Owners that is considered non-profit so that it pays no taxes) is just looking for an excuse here. The patriots were laughed at when they tried to pull the temperature excuse out of their ass, so they want a University to back up the "pressure goes down with temperature" excuse. They need to do this because even die hard Patriot fans are not buying the "a locker room attendant did this all on his own" story. And lets completely ignore why this supposed temperature drop affected only one teams footballs and not those provided by the other team, or why the problem was only observed when the opposition intercepted a ball and not by any of the Patriot players as they handled the balls.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
What was the local barometric pressure doing over the course of that same time period? Pressure inside a football is relative - to the pressure of the air outside the football.
If you combine temperature's effect on air pressure, a local increase in barometric pressure, and possibly some effect of the temp/humidity change from locker room to field, who knows what the range of change is. Experiments will certainly be the best way to figure that out.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
It didn't make any difference to the outcome of the game but it still persists. The NFL has rules governing the inflation... yada yada
1) It could have been the cold.
2) It could have been that New England knowingly under-inflated the footballs and played the first half of the game knowing it.
3) It could have been a mistake on New England's equipment folks, shit happens.
Chose one of three because it didn't make any difference in the outcome because once the officiating crew check them at half-time they detected it and changed the pressure. If there was a question to a violation of the rules it should have been brought out then by the refs, but they didn't do it and that's a bad problem here. Sure pressure can change, fuck the damn things can leak, it was the cold, an earthquake .. whatever the reason it's over and this countless going back and forth isn't going to change things but it may eventually give the NFL a scapegoat. Belichick is still in the dog house over the videotape episode because he didn't follow through with the punishment that Goodell metered out, he did it in spirit but not how it was agreed so ultimately he'll probably be suspended.
The NFL has to fix the situation moving forward. If it was cheating, weather conditions, bad equipment, whatever they need to fix it so it's no longer an issue.
1) The footballs for games should be considered the NFL's property and for the game they should be supplied, monitored and checked by the NFL. MLB for example doesn't let the teams play with baseballs that they bring to the game, the NFL should follow suit. No more teams bringing game balls.
2) It's questionable that the NFL needs 42 to 54 footballs per game. It needs to be brought down to a reasonable number 20 or under. If that means no more "momento" footballs touchdowns etc. then too bad. After the game the officials can divvy them up between the two teams so they can distribute them how they see fit.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
AMEN! It is the utterly stupidest name imaginable. I refuse to use it.
Fortunately we have an ideal gas Law and not just a theory or the anti-science masses would never get a believable answer on whether their circus is rigged.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
conditions at the time of the incident would prove or disprove it in about 5 minutes.
Dumb question from someone who knows little about football: wouldn't both teams be playing with the same balls, and thus both have equal benefit from the alleged deflation?
We are almost there where we can put a tiny unnoticeable chip inside the ball to monitor pressure and temperature passively. All it will take then is a scanner used by a ref or some large loop antennas in or around the field and that will put an end to it. Any change could be picked up right away.
...there is a lot of (hot) gas floating around here!
... on one side and stuff.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You don't need a physicist, a local tire dealer will tell you that. As air temperature drops it will cause a loss in pressure in inflated items. In an automotive tire this drop is only about 1 psi per 10 degrees below freezing. Not sure how big a difference this whole "deflate-gate" thing is about but I imagine it's a bit more.
The origin.
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
But Goodell doesn't have any balls himself, much less any to spare, so that's not going to happen.
Seriously, though, if the pressure in each ball is such a big deal and needs to be so closely controlled, that would be something every damn person involved in professional football would know, and the NFL would control the pressure in each ball - and the balls themselves - much more closely.
Hell, they already do it for balls used in the kicking game where it is a big deal - because an overinflated ball where the leather has been washed in soapy water is really hard to catch and then hold on to...
In other words, this is just extra publicity for the NFL.
If it was environmental, ALL of the balls ON BOTH SIDES would have been underinflated. It doesn't take a room full of nerds to figure that out. Unless the Colts kept their balls in a warmer, this is a stupid waste of time. Have some integrity and stop trying to find ways to let the Patriots off the hook. Cheating is so ingrained in their culture they do it when they don't even need to. And they're not good at cheating because they keep getting caught. Tear their house to the ground and rebuild on a fresh foundation.
Wow, the first time in the history of /. (at least the decades I'm aware about it) when throwing in some well measured sentences about Thermodynamics would be adequate.
However people avoid it like the plague and instead bring up the "ideal gas law" ... pretty funny.
We are talking here about 6th grade physics, or depending on your country and education system perhaps 8th grade, and yes it is Thermodynamics, and yes it is so simple EVERYONE should grasp it.
Pretty surprising that one of the first posters explained the problem correctly and then we have a bunsh of posters who either contradict him or try to convice each other that he either 'may' be right or 'may' be wrong.
I don't know how much 'gate' is involved in the original topic ... but that a ball loses pressure aka deflates if the temperature drops is such a no brainer, I really wonder that people are capable of typing but reject this idea/fact.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They are past the low out door temp for the most part. Now the issue is believed to be ball preparation. The Patriots are saying (specifically BB) is that the rub down and pregame ball warm up artificially increases the psi of the ball. It's then weighed by an official, the official sees it's high and lowers it(NFL regulations says the ball must be between 12.5 and 13.5 psi). The ball then sits around until the game, and that's when it falls under the the 12.5 requirement, THEN you add in the weather. But the out door weather doesn't matter, as the balls are tested in the same environment (temp) both times. So no the physicists are not there to test the well established PV/T.
Back in 2006 Tom Brady lobbied hard to change the NFL rules about balls in such a way that would make this 'deflategate' scenario possible.
Amazingly enough, once the rule change went in, the Patriot's fumble rate dropped by half. The league average did not change and when Patriot players went to other teams, their personal fumble rates returned to the average.
That's an awful big coincidence. Awful big.
The refs felt the under inflated balls and said nothing. The players felt them and said nothing. The equipment manager did it on purpose. The QB has said they did it on purpose and it's okay because everyone does it. So unless they're going to figure out what molecular gas physics can make the people trying to cover this us shut the hell up, this is a waste of time. They cheated, end of story. Hey I know, let's find out what electrical atmospheric phenomenon can make them film their opposing teams' practices with spies. In case you don't remember, they did that too.
First there is a simple solution.. don't allow the teams to provide balls. Make it the domain of the refereeing staff.
Second, making jock vs geek jokes in TFA or TFS is insulting. Bullying is real and has very real consequences. I was subjected to the joked about circumstance and worse. I am no social justice warrior, but making light of a real and painful thing - one that still occurs in various forms today - only enables those that bully more easily abuse.
Oh, and of you think that it is a simple schoolhouse occurrence that we grow out of, I beg to differ. I took my pain out on those weaker than I, as do others, and bullying mentalities continue into adulthood, all you have to do is look at domestic abuse cases, or the modern police force for plenty of examples.
Silence is a state of mime.
The experiment shouldn't test whether a football can lose 2 psi of pressure from a drop in temperature.
It should test whether a 2 psi drop in pressure in a football can cause a football team to lose 38 points in a game.
Beyond that, who cares? It didn't effect anything.
This is just the continuation of the decades long expansion of every sport into a 24/7/365 soap opera. It's a shame, I used to enjoy watching them.
See headsmartlabs.com and scroll down for an experiment that shows a nearly 2 psi decrease due to lower temperature and a wet football.
This leaves the question of why the Colts' footballs were still fully inflated.
I don't really care about either team, but after everything I've read and seen, I think the ref checking the ball just squeezed them or checked a few and let the balls be approved. There is no list of pressures, and a former ball boy said they would not check every ball. This explains everything. If the ref did his job, checked every ball, logged it, and inflated them to specification, there would be no mystery. Either the ref is above scrutiny, or the league is just trying to cover up that their own procedures weren't followed. This is the biggest non-story I've ever heard about, and takes away from the teams, especially about the Seahawks back to back trips.
If the QB prefers deflated footballs and he's willing to risk having to feign innocence, then inflate to the minimum allowed pressure and let Nature do its thing. Brady can shuck and jive all he wants, though, and there's still no excuse.
Without adjusting for actual atmospheric pressure,
Min legal pressure = 12.5 +14.7 = 27.2
Inflate inside at 72F + 459 = 531 above absolute zero
Play outside at 48F + 459 = 507 above zero
Ideal gas law x = (27.2 * 507) / 531
x = 25.97 -14.7 = 11.07 psi.
It says they were really lucky or were really precise.
Either way they can claim that playing with illegal balls was an accident.
(It is the pressure during play that matters, not at inspection.)
From now on, the refs will have to use a thermometer and chart to see if the ball is legal for play.
(Or just let it sit out and adjust to the temp before measuring.)
.
Does the NFL want to find out the truth, or do they want to find ways to avoid finding out the truth?
The NFL allows teams to age the footballs. So after you've run these balls through a washing machine and then a dryer many times to make them rougher, who knows what it did to the football valves?
Aging the footballs for better grip (which the NFL lets the teams do) makes the valves not operate as well. Here is an article from a magazine that is totally biased towards Boston teams (sarcasm):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sports/football/eli-mannings-footballs-are-months-in-making.html?_r=0
Nobody cares. American football sucks!
Many commenters suggest the ideal gas law could be used to explain the temperature effect on the difference in pressure of the air in the footballs. Be careful about extrapolating its use to other circumstances. The ideal gas law works reasonable well for most gases at temperatures well above the boiling temperature of the gas and at relatively low pressures for small molecules. There's not enough room here to go through it in detail but a quick look in a college general chemistry text book or Wikipedia will fill the reader in. There are a number of modified ideal gas law equations that can do a pretty good job correcting for the influence of intermolecular interactions and molecular size on P vs T.
For the case at hand with gauge pressures of a couple of atmospheres and the pressure differences observed, the ideal gas law is probably good enough.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
PV=nRT : A ball that is found at 10.5 psig (25.2 psia) at 35'F will be at the regulation minimum pressure 12.5 psig at 74'F. Perfectly reasonable.
The non-idealities are red-herrings: deviations for Ideal Gas Law are tiny (10ppm?) at this low a pressure and warm a temperature (relative to critical for nitrogen & oxygen). Cold leather shrinks the football pressure boundary, increasing pressure. Condensation might drop pressure 0.5 psi further if the fill-air was saturated from a steamy locker room or grunting ball-boy exhale.
The point is, this doesn't take a PhD. In fact, a pHd may be too focussed and miss something like the condensation.
how much pressure drop is attributable to temperature.
The ball does not exist within a vacuum. Elevate a ball into the vacuum of space and watch it explode while its temperature drops slowly. Temperature of the gas inside the ball is not the only factor. Elevation likely did not change much, but barometric pressure change could also be a factor during some weather fronts (enough to have one's ears pop). The air pressure outside the ball arguably plays the biggest role in what shape the ball takes under internal pressure changes.
We all know where it originates from. Doesn't change the fact that sticking -gate onto the end of every scandal's name is utterly stupid.
It doesn't even make sense. It's not like the Watergate scandal had anything to do with water.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Dipping in liquid nitrogen before the conversion would have to be a better dirty trick that the spitball in baseball if you could get away with it.
Yes we all know about PV=nRT. But it's not just the pressure P and T that are changing in the equation. Why not also consider the rubber bladder, leather and stiched seams. Rubber and other un-oriented polymers Expand when chilled. the stitching threads are oriented to they should compress when chilled. My guess is the leather will expand too. So the pressure could drop just from the ball's volume increasing not just a constant.
Finally no one seems to consider an even easier way the balls could get deflated. The reason people like deflated balls is because they are more supple to grasp. Some QBs like to have the balls scuffed for the same reason. It would seem like a really good idea to achieve this would be to pour rubbing alchohol (isopropyl) on the balls. This is what cobblers do before they stretch a leather shoe. The balls would just soften on the outside plus expand under pressure, deflating them slightly. This might even be quicker to do than inserting a needle in each ball.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What I really want to know about "deflate-gate" is how does it even work? What's the advantage of an under-inflated ball? It seems like it would be harder to throw an under-inflated ball accurately. It might help you grip a ball better, but how often do NFL players fumble (enough to really make a difference?)?
And how would the Patriots keep the other team from getting the same advantage? The deflated balls would end up being used by both sides right? Even if the Patriots were stealthily deflating them on the field wouldn't the other team get the same ball after the next turnover?
Or do they change balls after every turnover? If so, how would the Patriots rig it so only they got the deflated ones?
Loves this!
We all don't know. Some of us are too young to read.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
"It doesn't even make sense. It's not like the Watergate scandal had anything to do with water."
Watergate-gate it is then
Oh, I don't think you have to be a Republican to appreciate how well "Ballghazi" just rolls off the tongue.
... deflation lasts more than 4 hours.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
As you noted, the altitude of the locker room is effectively the same as the field, so altitude would not be a factor. You made me curious about barometric pressure, so I looked it up. The highest-ever recorded pressure was less than 1 PSI above standard pressure, so even a record-breaking barometer reading wouldn't explain it.
The coefficient of expansion has nothing to do with this. The volume of rubber does increase when heated. But that doesn't determine how the elasticity behaves.
It's a classic science fair project to stretch rubber or polyethylene and then heat it. the student's expectation is the band will stretch but it contracts with heat. Same with polyethylene and shrinky dinks in the toaster.
http://agpa.uakron.edu/p16/les...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I was going to savor the victory, but its not fair to you...
If its not coefficient of thermal expansion, then what? Nerf might be comparable to "shrinky-dinks", but not League sanctioned footballs - there's not enough hard rubber to make an appreciable difference. Remember holding a fully deflated ball? Really not much substance to them.
"...has reached out to Columbia University's department of physics..."
I bet they "called" or "emailed."
"Reached out to" is a complete yambag phrase that needs to GTFO immediately.
Talk normal, people.
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
Bill Nye put a video out last week discussing deflategate.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/entertainment/2015/01/29/funny-or-die-bill-nye.funny-or-die
Yet the Colts didn't deserve to be in it. The balls they played with on offense weren't altered or deflated and the still only scored 7 points to the eventual 45 that the patriots scored. The Colts offense was shut down by the Pats defence and that's that
No, the Colts (or whomever the rules say) DO deserve to be in it, if that's what the rules say.
The Patriots cheated and were caught cheating. Unless the rules explicitly prescribe some other punishment for that offence, this should be treated as a game forfeit. They LOSE. If that means a far weaker team that almost certainly would have been clobbered if they'd played by the rules gets a superbowl slot - that's just fine. Maybe next year the teams will be more careful to keep their people under control.
If the rules are just advisory, who cares about the game? (They'll still get SOME fans. Like Pro Wrestling, for example, where the fans see it as a morality play entertainment, not a contest of strength and skill.) But $6,000 scalped seats won't be in their future.)
Meanwhile, the Colts got all the way to that last playoff game, so they're not TOTAL klutzes. If they deserve the slot cause they got their by playing fairly (or at least MORE fairly) and the Patriots don't, it would still be a fine contest.
As yourself this: Is Football about playing the game by the rules? Or is it about seeing how crooked you can be and get away with it?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Other reasons why the Colts balls would still be in the accepted pressure range:
1) They were closer to the high end of said range to start with. Most of the Patriots balls were *just* under the accepted low-end of 12.5, only a few were in the 1-2 lb low range.
2) The air they were inflated with was cooler. (If the compressor had to refill the tank part way through the process, the air being put into the tank would be warmer due to being recently compressed without time to cool.)
3) They were better protected from the cold weather. (Their container was kept covered more, or better shielded from wind, etc.)
The fact that none of the starting pressures were actually *recorded*, there can be quite a bit of speculation, but not much concrete, except that it is apparently *possible* for a temperature differential from 72F to 48F to explain all/most of even the most extreme pressure loss measured.
It is common knowledge (or is it a common myth?) that leather shouldn't get wet due to risk of damaging it. It was pouring rain that day. I would think that also should be considered.
And were there any conditions that prevented the non-impacted balls, such as the ones the Colts provided, from losing pressure even though it was raining on their side of the field, too? Did they get less wet somehow? Or was there some reason the rain did not affect them as severely? Were they inflated to higher pressure at the start of the game, but still within the 12.5 - 13.5 range?
Does the handling of the balls that the team does in the week before inadvertently affect that ability of a ball to hold its pressure? I've heard QBs talking about sanding them down. Do the Patriots do this? Could that make them more susceptible?
and said that, given, the climatic conditions, a pressure drop of much more than 0.5 psi was not possible.
leather is mostly polymers (like rubber), and the inside of a football is ... wait for it... a rubber bladder.
The only thing that does not make sense is why were all 12 balls of the Colts at 12.5 and over? Why were New England's the only ones that were under inflated?