Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] football orientation in flight

On 05/22/2008 05:45 PM, Folkerts, Timothy J wrote:

Perhaps it is time for someone to try some experiments! :-)

Agreed.

There are at least two manufacturers who make football throwing
machines Bata: http://www.batabaseball.com/football.html JUGS:
http://www.rogersathletic.com/football/field_training/field_training.asp?pid=104


From the brief promo info online, it sounds like these will throw
10-80 yds with control of speed, angle and (at least some control
of) spiral. This would provide repeatability and opportunity to
set up video cameras at the start and end to measure spin rates,
angle of trajectory, and angle orientation.

And they claim that most major college football teams have such a
device. I don't have access to one, but it could be a fun project
for an ambitious group of students!

It's fun to have a question that is so easily asked but doesn't have
a good answer (yet).

Could I make a really suggestion? How about CFD? Computer Fluid
Dynamics. If you're going to do something geeky like studying the
physics of football (instead of just playing the sport), you might
as well be reeeally geeky and use a computer.

My nightmare would be to do a whole bunch of careful measurements
with throwing-machines, cameras, accelerometers, et cetera, and find
that sure enough the ball pitches over under some conditions .......
but still have no idea why.

I did some CFD 20 years ago, and it was a real eye-opener. I spent
a long time debugging my program, only to discover that my program
had been correct all along and every book I'd ever read on the subject
was wrong.

In the 20 years since then, CFD software has become much more
widely available, easier to use, more powerful, and more able
to look at the details.

I'm not saying CFD would make it easy. My rule of thumb is that
nothing involving fluid dynamics is ever easy. Everybody thinks
it's easy until they try it. I'm just saying that it might be
/relatively/ easier to understand, relative to camera data.