Slashdot Mirror
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.
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'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!
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.
... is why you keep adding "gate" to everything. That'd be a question worth the attention of our top scientists.
Indeed. I much prefer the nomenclature "ballghazi" that I've been seeing tossed around (pun intended).
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
In this case, the sensational crap is making people want to know the real science. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Use it and get some funding for the physics lab away from the jocks for a change.
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.
I may have been a nerd, but I was the one stuffing kids into the lockers!
Yes, precisely! You need experimental data to find the proper stacking method for maximizing kids of varying masses within a locker superstructure.
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"
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.
TFS doesn't accuse /. of initiating the study.
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.
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.
Indeed. It seems the word is subject to...
inflation.
You could Google it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, it's a magical totem where you never have to fill in the numbers. Just like all math.
Manning was part of that lobby. What you're either unaware of, or choosing to ignore, is that kickers forced a change well before that. Kickers used to fuck with the ball a lot, forcing the NFL to change the rules. Brady and Manning simply wanted more freedom like was previously available, and the league created specific guidelines to avoid the issues of the past and compromise with the players. So weigh Mannings balls, he just broke every record last season.
.
Does the NFL want to find out the truth, or do they want to find ways to avoid finding out the truth?
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.
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?
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.
You threw me off with the 459 degF bias factor.
I'm accustomed to using 273 degC.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...
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.
Yuck - your math was correct, but let's simplify your answer a bit.
You started with a pressure of 27.2 PSI at room temperature, and arrived at nearly 26 PSI as the field pressure, with a realized loss of 1.2 PSI. That's an impressive loss, but the other team's footballs would have suffered a similar effect.
You have my admiration, sir or madam. Well done!
"...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