EP 45 · 42:51

Drag crisis and free-kick speeds

From The Physics of the World Cup: VAR, Smart Balls, and Soccer Aerodynamics

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42:53right? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, let's let's stay on this one. So if the transition happens too far up, what's that What is that going to do? That means that it's in the typical range of free kicks, corner kicks, and all of those things, right? The long passes. And when this occurs, the ball is kicked at high speed, but as it slows down, it's going to be in that transition point and it's going to go into a spot with from low drag coefficient to high drag coefficient and it's going to start doing weird things. What you want is most of the ball's trajectory to be in that low drag coefficient spot. >> This is why with the Jabulani all it would start going really fast and then at the last minute >> Yeah, last because because it's transit it slowed down into the high regime. This is exactly what these scientists

43:34saw in the wind tunnel measurements. So on the on the x-axis is the drag coefficient, on the y-axis is your velocity. >> All of the other balls, the Al Rihla >> on the x-axis is >> On the x-axis is the velocity, on the y-axis is the drag coefficient. The main thing to see is that all of the other balls, the Triangles is in red, all of the other balls are in the other colors from all the different other FIFA World Cups. The Jabulani is in the yellow. >> Yeah, that one. >> only one where the drag crisis is happening at a higher speed. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which and and that I mean this correlates to exactly what people saw. >> Exactly. Yeah. >> Uh that's fascinating. >> So so but this is like now quantitatively you can see that Jabulani is the outlier.

44:15>> Yeah, yeah. >> Right? >> And every other one effectively trends across the similar profile. >> And what you want is whenever you make a new ball you want it to basically do the same thing that the others did. Right? You want don't want it to do new things. >> make it look pretty but make it work the same. >> Yeah, make it work the same so that like whatever the players trained with that's what they're playing with. Right?

From the episode
  1. EP 45

    The Physics of the World Cup: VAR, Smart Balls, and Soccer Aerodynamics

    A World Cup special on the science behind the beautiful game, from VAR and smart-ball sensors to soccer ball aerodynamics, pitch engineering, and match momentum analytics.

    The Physics of the World Cup: VAR, Smart Balls, and Soccer Aerodynamics

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