Posted on 01/23/2015 1:50:05 PM PST by Colofornian
Under his oversized ski cap, Tom Brady could not hide from the fact he was convicting himself in the court of public opinion. The quarterback of the New England Patriots admitted that footballs pumped up to 12.5 pounds per square inch are "a perfect fit for me," yet swore he did not notice a difference in the AFC Championship Game when most of the balls had significantly less pressure.
Brady's story Thursday was harder to believe than the story of the 199th pick in the NFL draft becoming one of the greatest players of all time...
"I would never do anything outside of the rules of play," Brady said.
But his own words told a different tale, and as soon as he was done talking, a 17-year veteran of the quarterback position, Mark Brunell, said on ESPN that he was among those who didn't believe Brady. Earlier Thursday, even before Bill Belichick seemed to be throwing his franchise player under a triple-decker bus in his own news conference, Hall of Famer Troy Aikman said on a Dallas radio station the following:
"It's obvious that Tom Brady had something to do with this."...
(Excerpt) Read more at espn.go.com ...
” you’ve probably forgotten more about physics than I ever learned”
I can go with that. All I remember about my graduate physics class are the titles.
Except that if what u say is the case...many or most or almost all of the Colts balls would have had the same loss of inflation...we don’t find the nfl investigating the Colts for that...do we? (Or did that nuance of the game simply escape your attention?)
If the NFL was smart, and I am not saying that but the NFL should have impounded all of the game balls at halftime in an effort to preserve evidence...I am confident that there were a few other footballs in the stadium that could have been used in the second half.
I have been reading all of this stuff today about how cold weather affects footballs. I grew up and lived most of my life in the land of the Northern Aggressors...Cold weather should not affect the weight of the football. The oxygen molucles may huddle together for warmth causing the ball to seem deflated, but there should be as much oxygen in the ball cold as warm...Have you ever watched an NFL game when it is cold out? A member of the ball boy(adult male who is friends with the owner) team, sits with the balls near one of the gas fueled heaters. So the balls never really get cold as they are switched with every play.
Finally, anybody saying that this had no effect on the game is mistaken...it had a HUGE effect on the game...the Patriots all knew that the balls had been doctored and this allowed them to play with confidence that they had an inside tract in the game and that the, ‘Fix’, was in...
If it were minorly off, sure you can’t be expected to see any possible error, but certainly you can’t believe that 2/3 of the gas could leave and the ball would still be inflated?
I’m sorry if you took that as harsh, but one doesn’t have to have an advanced degree in physics to reason that out at a glance.
Even without understanding that the PSI rating is above and beyond the ambient atmosphere, coming up with a PSI of *negative* three before the sides of the football collapsed, a simple division of 12.5 by 3 would give a pressure of just over 4.
Neither of those answers is near 10.5, the rumor we have been discussing, and thus not plausible.
(I suppose NEXT you will be using your “physics apologia” to try to convince Us that the Patriot sideline was 20 to 30 degrees colder than the Colts sideline)
“One, the calculations rely on this being an “ideal gas” situation, and it’s not. Two, there are other variables besides temperature and pressure at play here. For example, the football’s volume probably changed at least a little bit.”
1. For the range of temperatures and pressures here, the ideal gas law is fine.
“At normal temperatures and pressures, the ideal gas and van der Waals equations give essentially the same results. “
http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/topicreview/bp/ch4/deviation5.html
2. At the range of pressures and temperatures here, the football is essentially a constant volume container. Any changes in volume would not impact the analysis.
I totally agree and that has been, at least in part, my argument. Neither we nor apparently the NFL refs have the data to determined what if anything happened outside the range of the “normal” performance of the gas in the football. The only thing we can say for certain is that the footballs used in the game were tested and approved for use by the refs prior to the start of the game. Whatever happened next was subject to the game conditions.
in a similar vein, I read very recently that the NFL had banned the use of ball heaters to be used on the sidelines during games. Whether this was to maintain consistency in the footballs throughout the game or to avoid the possibility of ‘over-inflationary’ forces, I have no idea.
“...Cold weather should not affect the weight of the football. The oxygen molucles may huddle together for warmth causing the ball to seem deflated, but there should be as much oxygen in the ball cold as warm...”
I have to call you on this one. It is not the weight of the ball but the pressure inside the ball that is being questioned.
“Have you ever watched an NFL game when it is cold out? A member of the ball boy(adult male who is friends with the owner) team, sits with the balls near one of the gas fueled heaters.”
Did they have heaters at the Pats/Colts game?
Tsk! Tsk! Touchy!
“The oxygen molucles may huddle together for warmth causing the ball to seem deflated, but there should be as much oxygen in the ball cold as warm...”
When the temperature goes down, the oxygen converts to nitrogen which takes up less space.
Just kidding. Air is mostly nitrogen.
Except that if what u say is the case...many or most or almost all of the Colts balls would have had the same loss of inflation..
Back in college I spent many hours practicing the van der Waals equations. And this was the first time I actually had any reason to refer to them. So they must apply here, dammit!
At the range of pressures and temperatures here, the football is essentially a constant volume container.
I'll bet you're right about that. But if I were an NFL administrator, I'd still want to see a repeatable experiment done.
I thought I discussed this possibility when I stated that without knowing the inflation pressures within the Colt’s footballs at the time of testing, we cannot know the ultimate result.
The example I used was that if the Colts’ footballs were inflated to the approved maximum 13.5 psi, the loss of pressure due to the game conditions would still keep their footballs withing the NFL approved range. But since we don’t know what their original pressure was, we can’t tell for sure. We can be certain that if the pressure was 12.5 psi at the time of testing, the footballs would have lost SOME pressure in game conditions and fallen below the NFL minimum.
One thing we know for certain is that both the Colts’ and Patriots’ footballs were inspected and approved prior to game time.
You are correct about the ppsi. If the cold was to the point of being dangerous to the players, then yes, they would have been used. It was my understanding that the game was played in the 50’s, so probably not. Again, non-tampered footballs all remained within the legal tolerances as required by the rule book, so cold weather is just a ruse...
Fill another ball up to 12.5 psi, then subject it to the same variables as the originals experienced.
https://www.facebook.com/PathfinderRegionalVocationalTechnicalHighSchool?fref=nf
“Again, non-tampered footballs all remained within the legal tolerances as required by the rule book, so cold weather is just a ruse...”
Considering that a football under these conditions could lose over a pound of pressure due to the temperature change, they will NOT remain within the 12.5 to 13.5 psig band.
Delta
Good question. I read over the past few days that the NFL banned the use of ball heaters for reasons that I cannot fathom, except that it maintains a consistency in the performance of ALL the footballs used in a game (not just the ones closest to the fire).
“Back in college I spent many hours practicing the van der Waals equations.”
Thanks to my programmable calculator I finished the thermo final over an hour early.
Then I suppose you don't want to hear any of my college slide rule stories.
Lol! Megyn Kelly has a fmr senior member of the cia on analyzing Belichick and Brady’s statements. Wow. It is just sports.
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