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How does one Bend it like Beckham |
WASHINGTON: How does one make a
football do things that seem to defy the forces of nature or, as immortalised in
the popular movie, Bend it like (David) Beckham?
A new study on the
science of soccer explains how the world's greatest players are able to do
miraculous things with the ball at their feet.
With football fans
glued to the ongoing FIFA World Cup in South Africa, John Eric Goff, physics
professor at Lynchburg College in Virginia has made the aerodynamics (studying
the motion of air when it interacts with a moving object) of the soccer ball a
focus of his research.
Goff looks at the ball's changing design, its
surface roughness and how asymmetric air forces contribute to its path once it
leaves a player's foot.
His analysis leads to an understanding of how
reduced air density in games played at higher altitudes -- like those in South
Africa -- can contribute to some of the jaw-dropping ball movements already seen
in this World Cup.
"The ball is moving a little faster than what some
of the players are used to," says Goff, who is an expert in sports
science.
For Goff, soccer is a sport that offers more than non-stop
action -- it is a living lab where physics equations are continuously
expressed.
"On the field, the balls manoeuver according to
complicated formulae but these can be explained in terms that the average viewer
can easily understand," he says.
The outcomes of jaw-dropping soccer
plays can be explained simply in terms of physics, said a release of the
American Institute of Physics.
Goff is also the author of the book,
"Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sports," which uncovers the mechanisms
behind some of the greatest moments in sports history.
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