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They're a natural fit, physics and football. Physicists and football coaches alike distill the cosmic mysteries of movement, time, and space down to simple equations scrawled on chalkboards. They are kindred spirits. Quoting Ditka: "If M=mv, does not X tackle O (assuming X avoids the crackback)?" And if you were to ask people to name the great silver-haired genius of the 20th century, and you were to conduct this survey in, say, a bar on a Sunday afternoon in the fall, Bill Walsh would probably kick Albert Einstein's ass.
But the larger truth is that any sport can be understood in scientific terms, for science is little more than a way to explain what occurs around us. We apply physics to football because it is the science that concerns itself with the behavior of matter and energy. If we were studying track and field, we would turn to chemistry, the science that concerns itself with how steroids build muscle mass.
During Super Bowl XXXIII we are likely to see several basics of physics in practice -- beyond Einstein's Theory of the Never-Ending Halftime Show. So says David Haase, a North Carolina State University physics professor who receives calls every January from sportswriters hopelessly seeking a fresh Super Bowl angle.
Take John Elway's passes, thrown so hard they leave a vapor trail without the aid of Fox techno-enhancements. "Elway does throw great spirals," Haase says. "The spinning of the ball around the axis -- the angular momentum -- with the axis of the ball parallel to its path, stabilizes the flight." In other words, the spiral helps the ball go straight.
Conversely, the wobbler, the classic wounded duck (see: Joe Kapp, circa 1970), loses angular momentum, takes on odd angles to its path, destabilizes, and gets picked off and returned for a touchdown.
Elway's blazing spirals would theoretically come in handy under windy conditions, such as those Denver faced in the conference championship game against the New York Jets. However, Elway's passes in blustery Mile High Stadium frequently went awry. Haase attributes this to the principle of "having a bad day."
Haase's Law of Spirals holds for punts, too, though the professor hasn't a clue as to how someone booting an oblong object can get it to spin tightly through the air. "You'd have to ask a coach that," he said. What Haase could say was that physics tells him that a typical 40-yard punt with 4-second hang time comes off the foot at 50 miles per hour.
As for running with the ball, all of us know this about Terrell Davis, the Broncos' MVP halfback: He has more than once flattened a would-be tackler. Does this make him a physics heretic? After all, Newton said friction will cause a moving object to slow down and stop.
"The thing that stops a ball carrier is the momentum exerted by the tackler," Haase explains. "The momentum is the product of the mass times the speed, or velocity."
So if you're going to tackle Terrell Davis?
"You want to hit him with a lot of momentum -- because he's going to be coming at you with a lot of momentum. The neat thing is that physics tells you that you don't have to be a big guy, or as big as the guy you're hitting. You can be a big guy not moving fast, or a little guy moving very fast, since again, momentum is the product of the mass times the velocity."
This is what John Madden is talking about when he says, "You gotta get up there and boom! bam! hit 'em before he cuts back and gets going, because once he has a head of steam, he'll just run right through you!"
Momentum also explains why huge, relatively slow men can thrive on the defensive line. These great mounds of beef typically run into ball carriers before they've had time to gather much speed; thus, the sheer size of the linemen provides enough momentum to match that of the ball carrier. Momentum explains, too, why collisions in the defensive backfield, where players are moving at tremendous speeds, are among the most violent.
But Haase notes that football players are "complicated systems," what with "arms, legs, and heads, lots of twisting and turning, and protective equipment" -- all factors in determining which player and which part of his body bears the brunt of a collision. Most collisions, in fact, aren't full-force. A player turns, ducks, or spins to avoid force, or braces to absorb the blow.
But what if a collision is dead-on? Haase says being drilled by 220-pound linebacker moving at full speed is akin to being hit by a 16-pound bowling ball dropped from the 14th floor of a building.
Which is why they wear pads.
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