As a life long Stiller fan, I have no love for the "B boys from Boston" but I think this is too much noise about nothing.
Tire pressure will change by one psi for approximately every 10 degrees of temperature change. Lower temperatures lead to lower pressure and higher temperatures to higher pressure.
If the balls were inflated in a room at 72 degrees to a psi of 12.5 and then taken out side, where the temp was about 49 then the psi would fall to about 10.5 psi.
Where the hell is the big conspiracy and the big mystery?
I know that reporters don't have a clue about psi but one would think that the NFL officials might know about some science.
Physicists don’t agree with your calculations.......and you haven’t explained why the Colts’ footballs didn’t experience a similar decrease.
Were the Colts balls filled to 14.5 pounds in a 72 degree room since they measured in compliance? (12.5 - 13.5) kind of think not.
Someone did the actual math (don’t have the link, sorry) and came up with a temperature-related variance of less than 0.5 PSI.
Second that.
Lower temperatures lead to lower pressure and higher temperatures to higher pressure.
Right. But to do the calculation, the temperatures must be in Kelvin, not Fahrenheit or Centigrade. My calculations (which might be wrong, as it's early for me) show that a 72 F to 49 F temp drop would result in a roughly 7% pressure drop.
If the ball was at 12.5 psi originally, this would put the ball's pressure at 11.6 psi at game time.
This calculation assumes that - untouched - the ball's volume remains roughly the same.
the balls were inflated in a room at 72 degrees to a psi of 12.5 and then taken out side, where the temp was about 49 then the psi would fall to about 10.5 psi.
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LOL. But only for the balls used by the patriots.
The balls the colts used did not experience this drop in PSI.
How does your appeal to science explain this?
My improved calculation: A football with a gauge pressure of 12.5 psi at 72 F should have a gauge pressure of 11.4 psi at 49 F.
This calculation assumes that the air is behaving as an ideal gas, and the ball is at sea level. Neither is true of course, but won't affect the results very much. What might affect the results more are other factors, like the non-rigid behavior of the ball, as lepton has pointed out.