I had to post this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jXazEYi3P8&feature=youtu.be with Stephen Colbert interviewing Neil deGrasse Tyson about Pluto. Both are favorites of mine. Enjoy!
Category: science
still dealing with deflated footballs?
Months ago, I weighed in more than once about the deflated football issue with the Patriots/Colts AFC championship game.
When the Wells report came out, I was too preoccupied with other issues to write about it, although I thought that its vague findings were in no way proof that should have punishments inflicted on Tom Brady or the team. Seriously, what court would convict on the basis of “more probable than not” that someone was “at least generally aware of” breaking a rule? Given the reaction in the press, I guess the court of public opinion…
At any rate, I just saw this link on a New England friend’s Facebook page: http://blog.masslive.com/patriots/2015/06/independent_study_of_wells_rep.html. The American Enterprise Institute has conducted an independent critique of the Wells report and found that the difference in pressure between the Patriots’ balls and the Colts’ balls at halftime is because the Patriots’ were tested at the beginning of halftime, when they were still cold, and the Colts’ at the end of halftime, when they had warmed significantly.
It’s our old friend the Ideal Gas Law at work again.
Science rules! Let’s hope that Brady’s appeal will be decided on the science rather than the court of public opinion and the dubious blame game.
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One-Liner Wednesday: truth
“If it is true, then science, psychology, poetry, and philosophy will also be seeing the same thing, but from different angles, at different levels, and with different vocabularies.”
– Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, p. 132
Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/05/20/one-liner-wednesday-love-is/
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Earth Day
I just posted this quote for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday:
“Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”
– Albert Schweitzer
Because it is Earth Day, I want to expand a bit on Dr. Schweitzer’s quote. Yes, we must embrace all living creatures and all of humanity, especially the most vulnerable, but we must also embrace the plants and earth itself. It is essential that the nations of the world come together in Paris in December to adopt limits on greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophic climate change. We can’t undo the damage we have already done and additional climate impacts will develop in the coming years, but we can still keep the earth livable if we act boldly and quickly to phase out fossil fuels and ramp up renewable energy. We have the technology needed to do this, with advancements occurring every year which will make the transition easier. There is no other option. It’s our only world.
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Perspective
A classic depiction of the powers of ten, courtesy of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day series – and IBM of 1977: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150324.html
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Again with the deflated footballs?!?
I can’t believe I am writing another post about deflated footballs, but B sent me this link today from the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/sports/football/deflation-experiments-show-patriots-may-have-science-on-their-side-after-all.html Apparently, my rudimentary knowledge of physics coupled with practical experience with things like car tires is borne out by experimentation and advanced calculations!
This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January: http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/
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I called it!
Earlier this week, I wrote a post about how physics could explain the deflated footballs in the Patriots’ game on Sunday. I was just watching the evening news and saw coverage of a news conference given by the Patriots’ head coach, explaining that they did an experiment in which they re-created the temperature changes of last Sunday and found that the balls had their pressure drop one and a half psi when they were left outdoors at forty degrees after having been inflated to regulation 12.5 psi indoors.
Maybe the media and the NFL should have been reading my blog! 😉
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deflated footballs
Unlike the majority of people in the United States, I don’t care for or about football. However, it’s been impossible to watch a news broadcast without seeing reference to the footballs that the Patriots used on Sunday being underinflated with the implication that someone must have tampered with them after they were tested by the officials.
But isn’t it possible the culprit was physics?
I’m assuming that the balls were prepared indoors, in a warm room, with the minimum psi allowed. The balls would be properly inflated when they were checked a couple of hours before the game. If the balls were then immediately moved out into the cold, the pressure would have dropped, given that the temperature outdoors would be fifty to sixty degrees colder. Ideal gas law and all that….
It’s the same mechanism that means that the first cold snap of the year brings a call from Grandma that her low tire pressure indicator in her car is lighting up. It’s not that someone sneaked into the garage and let air out of the tires. It’s just that the lower temperature means the air in the tires is exerting less pressure.
If that is how it happened, I guess you could argue that the Patriots followed the letter of the law rather than the spirit, but I think many fans and media are jumping to conclusions about foul play without any real evidence.
Maybe they should be shaking their fists at science.
This post is part of Just Jot It January: click the link and join in! http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/
Joanne Corey 