Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
May 25, 2016 - 11:20pm PT
|
What say you EdH,PhD? What say you all?
maybe I have a post here somewhere, my initial calculations showed that the variability of the pressure in the balls for that game is consistent with the temperature difference assuming some initial temperature inside where the balls were inflated and the game temperatures outside.
However, the pressure gauges aren't particularly precision instruments, and there could be systematic differences among different gauges, if you had one that "read high" to test initially, and one that "read low" when you retested them at half-time, you could come to some strange conclusions...
...this is probably what happened to the Colts' balls, which did not seem to deflate, even though they should have, the initial fill with a gauge that "read low" and the half-time reading with the "read-high" gauge.
The only way of doing this accurately is to fill all the balls together and measure their pressure with the same gauge for all the measurements.
===
BUT
the NFL rule is not practical since the ideal gas law relates the three attributes of the football: pressure, temperature and volume.
If you keep the volume fixed, then the pressure and the temperature have to track... the rule ignores temperature, and says the volume and the pressure have to be in some prescribed range, without taking into account the possible temperature variations at the game venue. It turns out the for many venues, the temperature variation is large enough to that the balls cannot be filled once and meet the specs for the entire game.
It's a stupid rule... unless you have someone constantly monitoring the pressure in the balls, and that's even stupider.
They should just let the QB's decide how they want the balls inflated... I can't imagine why they thought it was necessary to make this rule.
===
Certainly, the ball inflation wasn't an issue in this game, the Colts really played poorly.
I also find it strange that the good cold weather play of the Patriots was attributed to cheating, rather than the more likely explanation that they practice cold weather play and players who screw up are pulled out of the game very quickly (fumbles, etc), so the players are very motivated to play well. More teams could do that, too...
|
|
the Fet
climber
Tu-Tok-A-Nu-La
|
|
|
May 26, 2016 - 09:12am PT
|
The Colts balls did "deflate". It's just the Patriots balls deflated about 0.5 psi more on average than the Colts.
But there's so many factors in play so that the 0.5 psi difference may not even exist. 1. Pats balls were used more, so were out of the ball bag getting colder while on the field 2. At half time Pats balls were tested first, then the Colts balls which had more time to warm up and have a pressure rise 3. gauges were inaccurate and showed different readings, the difference between the two gauges was more than 0.5 psi 4. Gauges were likely switched at one point during the testing at half time because all of a sudden the numbers changed but they didn't record which gauge was used. 5. Only 3 or 4 of the Colts balls were tested.
To me that's the main evidence. What was the difference between the Pats and Colts (control group) balls. There seems to be a difference but it seems within the margin of error to me. And even if it is a full 0.5 psi difference would Tom Brady really want someone to let out so little air? And do it very quickly in a random way so the balls might end up being different pressures? Seems like consistency is more important than a little less pressure.
There's a good chance Tom Brady is innocent and if so I completely understand him fighting this to the end. He was willing to take a suspension for lack of cooperation but will not admit cheating. As I wouldn't if I was innocent.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!