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If it hadn't been for that pesky Jabulani...

Posted: July 1st 2010
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Laminar flow and turbulence – what a drag! Now it’s official – England’s footballers could have done with double physics before PE in South Africa.

Had the boys in white gone back to the classroom before the World Cup they might have learned that the laws of physics and a brand new spherical ball were to blame for not only our world cup woes but for every other bend-it-like-Beckham merchant.

Using Sir Isaac Newton (Lincolnshire lad) as a scapegoat is the latest in a long line of post South Africa excuses but in the vacuum of truth and fact left by rumours of changing room strife, it pays to go all scientific and solve the problem. And that’s exactly what those nice people at The University of Nottingham have done.

A team of physicists at the University has examined the controversial new Jabulani ball to find out why so many of the tournament’s players — and not just those in the England squad — have complained about the new official World Cup ball. Their explorations — and a highly-entertaining penalty shoot out — are available to view online as part of the University’s Sixty Symbols project.

And their findings are complex, involving the effects of laminar flow (the way air flows over the ball); turbulence and drag; gravity; fluid mechanics and hydromechanics; energy, friction and momentum; spin and pressure; high co-efficient restitution (how high the ball bounces); and atmospheric pressure. No wonder Rooney looked so confused on the pitch in recent games…

“A lot of players are having problems controlling the new ball,” said nanoscientist Professor Philip Moriarty, of the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. “In fact, some of them have said that it behaves as if the supernatural is controlling it, rather than the player. They really can’t handle it.”

Professor Moriarty noted that the new Jabulani ball is put together in a very different way to the previously-used Buckminster Ball, which is formed from 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons stitched together. The Jabulani is smoother, with a more moulded appearance, and features ridges encircling the ball.

This makes the ball more aerodynamic. Drag is reduced and the ball travels further through the air — meaning that players tend to over-kick, throw or head the ball.

Neatly side-stepping a question from film maker Brady Haran about whether the average footballer has the capacity to understand the laws of physics that would allow them to have any control over the ball at all, Professor Moriarty responds: “What is remarkable is that — simply through practice and training — footballers have subconsciously embedded all this physics knowledge through intuition. The best can bend the ball almost at will.

“With a more aerodynamic ball, the players have to somehow take account of this — without knowing all of the detailed physics of how this thing flies, causing it to behave in a completely different way. They have to ‘unlearn’ their control of the ball and then relearn it completely.”

And in the spirit of enquiry, unlearning and relearning was what the physicists did, staging their own penalty shoot out — resulting in the type of goalmouth histronics and celebrations more suited to the pitches of South Africa than University Park.

“It reminds me of one of those plastic flyaways you used to have when you were a kid,” said Dr Tony Padilla, an expert on dark matter and dark energy who took part in the penalty shoot out. “The ones you used to get at the fair for 50p.”

The video on the physics of the Jabulani ball is available at www.sixtysymbols.com/videos/019.htm, and you can watch the penalty shoot out at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YR05T347U0&feature=watch_response
The Sixty Symbols team have also examined the physics of another key element of this year’s World Cup tournament — the vuvuzela. Watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATVbnilxIrs
The Sixty Symbols site can be found at www.sixtysymbols.com

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