The Science Behind Jabulani, Adidas's 2010 World Cup Soccer Ball

Jabulani, Deconstructed: Adidas

From Popular Science:

See a video on how this year's latest and greatest piece of soccer engineering comes together.

While the sporting world watched the clock for the high noon announcement of the brackets for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, we were salivating over another four-year tradition: the engineering and innovation that goes into the official World Cup ball. With the 2010 Cup's Jabulani ball (‘to celebrate’ in isiZulu), Adidas claims it has surpassed its own Teamgeist from 2006 in constructing the roundest and most accurate ball ever played. See how it's made inside.

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For Football Fans, Almost Losing Is Ideal

From Live Science:

The most exciting football games are those your team almost loses. No big news there. But a new study looked into the complex emotions of being a fan and reached some interesting conclusions.

Researchers studied fans of two college football teams as they watched the teams' annual rivalry game on television. Fans of the winning team who, at some point during the game, were almost certain their team would lose, ended up thinking the game was the most thrilling and suspenseful.

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Fewer Players 'Secret To World Cup Success'

From The Telegraph:

The secret to success in next year’s Football World Cup could have been uncovered by academics.

New research shows that managers who field the fewest players during a campaign go on to win the most trophies.

By contrast, those who tinker too often with their selection cut their chances of victory.

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Children Playing Multiple Sports Suffer Fewer Injuries

Multiple sports good for you Photo: BARRY BLAND/BARCROFT MEDIA

From The Telegraph:

Playing more than one sport should protect you from injury, claim scientists.

Researchers have found that it is a good idea to break up your normal training routine with a different sport as it avoids repetitive strain injuries and increases the strength of joints and muscles.

They believe that especially in similar speed sports such as basketball and football it can greatly reduce injuries.

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'Breaking' Curveballs Are Just an Illusion

Zhong-Lin Lu, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at USC, who along with USC alumni Emily Knight and Robert Ennis, and Arthur Shapiro, associate professor of psychology at American University, developed a simple visual demo that suggests a curveball's break is, at least in part, a trick of the eye. Credit: USC

From Live Science:

The answer to the question of whose curveball breaks harder — that of the Yankees' A.J. Burnett or the Phillies' Cole Hamels — may be neither. Zhong-Lin Lu, professor of cognitive neuroscience at USC, along with colleagues from USC and American University, developed a simple visual demo that suggests a curveball's break is, at least in part, a trick of the eye. Their demo won the Best Visual Illusion of the Year prize at the Vision Sciences meeting earlier this year. Try it here. A related press release is here. The curveball's effect is due to batters being forced to switch between peripheral vision and central vision during a swing. For more on the research, see Lu's Web page. For more on Lu, read his responses to the ScienceLives 10 Questions below.

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Sports Jocks Are Oh-So Predictable

Another fast ball... how predictable (Image: Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

A clever athlete knows how to keep an opponent guessing, but professionals act more predictably than they should. So says a study based on game theory, which shows that baseball pitchers throw too many fastballs and American football teams don't pass the ball enough. The finding could give savvy teams an extra victory or two over the course of a season.

The game theory concept of "minimax" says that players in a head-to-head match should follow two basic rules: first, play in a way that minimises your opponent's possible gain; second, be unpredictable.

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Computer Could Call Football Plays

New York Jets place kicker Jay Feely (3) kicks an overtime, game-winning field goal against the New England Patriots in their NFL football game in Foxborough, Massachusetts November 13, 2008. Brian Snyder / Reuters

From Live Science:

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Football coaches are famous for their dedication to winning. Video studies of upcoming opponents begin so early in the morning that most people are still dreaming about their first cup of coffee; strategy sessions run past the time insomniacs fall asleep.

But a new computer model may be able to take the play calling load off of the coach and, through fast, real-time analysis of all the offensive and defensive possibilities, dictate the best play to call in any game situation. The program takes the human element out of play calling and instead uses mathematical and statistical techniques.

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7 Equipment Breakthroughs That Shook Up Sports

From Popular Mechanics:

It's one of the most entertaining games of cat and mouse in the sports world. A competitor, or a manufacturer, comes up with a piece of gear that threatens to turn a sport upside down. Then the game's powers that be are faced with a dilemma. Ban it outright? Rewrite the rule book? Or just let it be? Just such a controversy is raging in swimming, where streamlined suits have been banned, but it's important to remember that seeking an edge through better equipment is as old as sport itself. Here are seven pieces of gear that shook up their respective sports and sent officials back to the drawing board.

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How Fast Can Man Run?

Click Image to Enlarge

From The Daily Mail:

As Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt smashes his own world record, are there ANY limits to what the human body can achieve?.

The question is, just how fast can he go? We asked this back in August last year when he smashed his own 100metres world record at the Beijing Olympics.

Then, he did it in 9.69 seconds, but his insouciant, hands-aloft stroll over the finishing line made many suspect that there was more to go.

And on Sunday, a year to the day after setting that extraordinary record in China, Usain Bolt showed that there was - more than a tenth of a second, in fact. Now, if he could only sort out his dodgy start, he might be able to break the record once more.

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New Batting Helmet Offers Protection From 100 MPH Heat

The S100: More protective, but less stylish Earl Wilson via The New York Times

From Popular Science:

But players think it's too ugly to wear.

Back when pitching meant Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown gingerly tossing baseballs so worn down that they resembled leather hacky sacks, players didn't need to worry about lifelong injury after getting hit by a pitch. But now that 'roided up monsters can hurl the ball fast enough to cause serious damage, players need something substantial to protect their dome.

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How Fast Can Sprinters Go?

From Live Science:

Well, maybe Usain Bolt was right after all. As discussed in our Physiology of Speed story, Bolt predicted he could run 100 meters in 9.54 seconds, lowering his own world record of 9.69 seconds.

Now, researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands say he could shave another 3/100ths of a second off and hit the tape at 9.51 seconds.

Using the "extreme value theory," Professor of Statistics John Einmahl and former student Sander Smeets have calculated the fastest possible times for men and women. Between 1991 and 2008, they chronicled the best times for 762 male sprinters and 469 female sprinters. They did not trust the data prior to 1991 as possibly being tainted by doping athletes (not that's its gotten much better since then.)

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Why Winning Athletes Are Getting Bigger

Pictured are Jordan Charles, left, and Adrian Bejan. (Credit: Duke University Photography)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2009) — While watching swimmers line up during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, former Olympic swimmer and NBC Sports commentator Rowdy Gaines quipped that swimmers keep getting bigger, with the shortest one in the current race towering over the average spectator.

What may have been seen as an off-hand remark turns out to illustrate a trend in human development -- elite athletes are getting bigger and bigger.

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Scientists Reveal the Secret to Hockey's Wrist Shot

From Live Science:

It takes less than a second, but the wrist shot in hockey is one of the hardest skills in sports to master. Just ask the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Detroit Red Wings who will face each other starting this weekend in the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup Finals. Both teams know the value of the "quick wrister" and the scoring chances it creates. Now, a team of Canadian (of course) researchers believe they have isolated the key components of a successful wrist shot using 3-D motion capture analysis.

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My Comment: Never could master the wrist shot .... ended up playing goal tender in my teenage years.

Great Golfers' Brains Have More Gray Matter

From Live Science:

As Tiger Woods goes for his fifth green jacket in this weekend's Masters Tournament, mortal golfers wonder what's inside his head that keeps him winning. Well, chances are his brain actually has more gray matter than the average weekend duffer.

Researchers at the University of Zurich have found that expert golfers have a higher volume of the gray-colored, closely packed neuron cell bodies that are known to be involved with muscle control. The good news is that, like Tiger, golfers who start young and commit to years of practice can also grow their brains while their handicaps shrink.

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Field Equations: The Physics of Baseball

From Scientific American:

A Q&A with physicist Alan Nathan.

At long last, Opening Day is nearly here. As with each new season, this one arrives with a slew of major-league questions: Can the Phillies repeat? Can the spendthrift Yankees break their World Series drought? Is this the year the Athletics reclaim their freewheeling magic? But the answers to all those big questions will ultimately arise from countless small interactions, both human (a pitcher facing down a batter, a base runner challenging a catcher's arm, a manager's clever double switch) and physical (a ball meeting the bat's sweet spot, a sharp slider slicing through the air, a pop fly tracing a parabolic arc through the sky).

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How Baseball Players Catch Fly Balls

From Live Science:

With the crack of the bat, you see the ball jump into the air. You take a few quick steps forward. Then, as you watch the ball continue to rise faster, you feel your stomach sink knowing that this one is going over your head. What went wrong?

How our eyes, brains, arms and legs combine to track and catch a fly ball has stumped scientists for more than 40 years.

A new study supports the original theory of it all while offering some practical tips.

By watching fielders shag pop flies, researchers have noticed a few interesting quirks. First, great ballplayers will not sprint to the exact spot on the field where they think the ball will land and then wait for it. Rather, they usually adjust their speed to arrive at the landing spot just as the ball arrives.

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How (And Why) Athletes Go Broke

From Sports Illustrated:

Recession or no recession, many NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball players have a penchant for losing most or all of their money. It doesn't matter how much they make. And the ways they blow it are strikingly similar.

What the hell happened here? Seven floors above the iced-over Dallas North Tollway, Raghib (Rocket) Ismail is revisiting the question. It's December, and Ismail is sitting in the boardroom of Chapwood Investments, a wealth management firm, his white Notre Dame snow hat pulled down to his furrowed brow.

In 1991 Ismail, a junior wide receiver for the Fighting Irish, was the presumptive No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. Instead he signed with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts for a guaranteed $18.2 million over four years, then the richest contract in football history. But today, at a private session on financial planning attended by eight other current or onetime pro athletes, Ismail, 39, indulges in a luxury he didn't enjoy as a young VIP: hindsight.

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The Tech That Makes The Super Bowl Super

From CNET:

At its core, football represents the polar opposite of technology: A bunch of large men run around a field, battling for position and the control of a small pigskin ball.

Of course, the production of an actual NFL game requires lots of technology--from the headsets coaches use to communicate, to the computers used to calculate statistics to the HD cameras that record the contest for the viewing audience.

When it comes to the Super Bowl, one of the biggest sporting events in the world, technology has always played a very central role, and this year is no exception.

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Science May Explain Our Love Of Sports

Super Bowl 42

From Kansas City:

A relatively recent discovery in science may explain our country’s obsession with watching sports — like the expected audience of 90 million or so for today’s Super Bowl.

They call them “mirror neurons,” and they fire in your brain much the same way whether you’re doing something or watching someone else do it. The discovery killed a lot of assumptions scientists had about brain activity.

It explains why you get hungry if you see someone eating a juicy steak, thirsty when you see a cold drink — or excited when you watch sports.

“In a way, your brain is behaving the same way as (the athletes you’re watching),” says Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at UCLA and the author of Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others. “Your brain is making the same signals as the athletes you see on the screen, even if you’re just on the sofa eating popcorn.”

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Scientists To Football Players: Give Us Your Brains

Brains! Brains!!: Gaetan Lee (CC Licensed)

From Popular Science:

Amidst a growing body of evidence tying severe health problems to multiple concussions, researchers are tapping NFL stars for a more hands-on corroboration

Whenever rich people gather, charities flock hoping to solicit donations of time and money. But Chris Nowinski is asking NFL players at the Super Bowl this weekend for something a bit more personal. He wants them to donate their brains to science. And he’s getting what he wants.

Nowinski is the founder of the Sports Legacy Institute (SLI), which along with the Boston University School of Medicine is conducting autopsies on former athletes to research the effect of concussive impacts. To date eight former NFL players have promised to donate their brains to science after their death. Nowinski is a former professional wrestler who understands firsthand the potential ramifications of head impacts.

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