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NFL Asks Columbia University For Help With Deflate-Gate

Posted by samzenpus on from the keeping-up-the-pressure dept.

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."

15 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. It's not the gas... by Jaime2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:It's not the gas... by CanadianRealist · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The behaviour of the gas is described nicely by the ideal gas law: PV/T is constant, where P is the pressure of the gas, V is the volume and T is the temperature. (T must use a scale relative to absolute zero.)

      The best answer here is to do a bunch of experiments, not a bunch of calculations.

      The NFL has plenty of experience in dealing with inflating footballs. It's pretty hard to believe that they don't understand what's going on. They should be well aware of the effects of cooling on both the ball and the air inside it. It's not like they recently started using inflated leather balls.

    2. Re:It's not the gas... by Jaime2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, I said that the behavior of gasses is well understood and you responded with the ideal gas law. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? If you are agreeing, then why post?

      Next you mentioned the the NFL has a bunch of experience with this. Yet, it is the NFL that is asking for help. Obviously they don't agree with you.

    3. Re:It's not the gas... by easyTree · · Score: 3, Funny

      The best answer here is to do a bunch of experiments

      Yes, let's fire balls at jocks' heads and see what the effect of varying the environmental parameters is.

      --
      Requiem for the American Dream
    4. Re:It's not the gas... by Ambassador+Kosh · · Score: 3, Informative

      Air is NOT an ideal gas at ALL. You can't use the ideal gas law and have it work.

      However you are in luck though since engineers made tables long ago of air properties at a huge range of temperatures, pressures etc and you can just look up the properties of air. However the properties of the material of the football would have to be tested.

      The only time you can use the ideal gas law is with a nearly pure gas at high temperature and no chemical reactions.

      It does suck that so much of the stuff we teach people in chemistry is not actually useful.

      --
      Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD! :)
    5. Re:It's not the gas... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The NFL is not interested in a scientific answer. They are interested in an answer from a supposed authority which reaches a conclusion they agree with. The NFL can then take that answer and champion it as having been "verified by scientists!".

      The NFL wants this whole mess to go away. They do not want people thinking that the players and teams cheat because people will become less invested in a rigged game. And if that happens, the NFL makes less money.

      What the NFL is really asking is for some scientist to come forward with an explanation about how the Patriot's footballs can be slightly deflated while the other team's balls remained pert and bouncy. Whether the scientist involved provides a legitimate answer or not is inconsequential, so long as it sounds convincing.

      So, yeah, once again the jocks are trying to crib off the hard work of the nerds.

    6. Re:It's not the gas... by ember42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dry air is within 1 part in 1000 of the ideal gas law at near ambient pressure and temperature. I challenge you to detect this with portable instrumentation.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
      Unless the football is extremely elastic or is strongly adsorbent of gasses the ball properties wont matter much at all.
      The interesting question is do they use dry air? If they use ambient air, compressing it to ~13 psi will increase the dew point by ~10C / 18F. If the dew point is now above ambient, moisture will condense, which would lower the pressure much more than ideal gas law predicts.

  2. Still Doesn't Explain... by DougF · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...why the other team's game balls remained properly inflated...given they were undergoing similar circumstances (weather, handling, use, etc).

    --
    Impetuous! Homeric!
    1. Re:Still Doesn't Explain... by Reverberant · · Score: 3, Informative

      why the other team's game balls remained properly inflated...given they were undergoing similar circumstances (weather, handling, use, etc).

      Properly inflated /= experienced no deflation. The Colt's footballs could have experienced deflation and still met the 12.5 psi limit if they were inflated at the high-end of the range to start. This of course assumes that the leaks regarding the Colts footballs are correct, the initial report of 11/12 Pats game balls being 2 psi under the limit have been contradicted by the repots, including a report this morning that only 1 ball was 2 psi under the lime (the ball handled by the Colts' staff), a few balls were about 1 psi under the limit, and the rest were just a "tic" below 12.5 psi.

      They also weren't necessarily undergoing similar circumstances" - the Pats' balls were used more and it could be that the Colts (as a dome team) were more concerned about keeping the balls dry than the Patriots were (homer speculation on my part).

  3. MIT? by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What? They're afraid MIT is full of Pats fans?

  4. yep. Columbia's to authoritatively say what we kno by raymorris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:Already debunked by one of Columbia's finest... by Reverberant · · Score: 3, Informative

    Which he had to correct because he used gauge pressure in his calculation rather than absolute pressure.

  6. NFL is just looking for an excuse by frovingslosh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... to help determine if a drop in temperature — a slowing of the air molecules inside the football — can explain the low pressure ....

    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.
    1. Re:NFL is just looking for an excuse by sribe · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You fail basic logic here. It's obvious the NFL is not looking for an excuse, they are looking for "real scientists" to back up their already-made rejection of the already-made excuse from the Patriots. The last thing anybody in this case looking for an excuse would do would be to hire physicists.

  7. Re:Deflate-gate? by The+Rizz · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sign the gategate petition to get the FBI to look into it.