The New England Patriots’ prevention of fumbles is nearly impossible • Hacker News Board

Re: The New England Patriots’ prevention of fumbles is nearly impossible

#61

Post by ragtimepiano » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 3:08 AM UTC

jsyedidia wrote: post #38

ellyagg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is claiming the Patriots aren't good. They are claiming that, with extremely good evidence at this point, they also cheated. There are other teams that try really hard to train their players not to fumble, including taking them out until they learn not to fumble. Belichick has been otherworldly good at this training. The Patriots were not always otherworldly at not fumbling. In fact, this acumen started the sa…

"They had the deflated footballs for a reason.": It's called the ideal gas law. http://nesn.com/2015/01/boston-college-professor-weather-had... If you're concerned that the chairman of BC's physics department didn't do his calculations correctly, I also have a Ph.D. in physics and corroborated them. Make sure you use both absolute pressure and absolute temperature if you want to do the computations yourself; it's rea…

Whether the Colts inflated their balls outdoors can be easily checked and would be a major news story. No story has appeared.

Re: The New England Patriots’ prevention of fumbles is nearly impossible

#62

Post by ragtimepiano » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 3:09 AM UTC

pdabbadabba wrote: post #43

jsyedidia wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They had the deflated footballs for a reason.": It's called the ideal gas law. http://nesn.com/2015/01/boston-college-professor-weather-had... If you're concerned that the chairman of BC's physics department didn't do his calculations correctly, I also have a Ph.D. in physics and corroborated them. Make sure you use both absolute pressure and absolute temperature if you want to do the computations yourself; it's rea…

I don't understand this as a defense. Either a) they inflated them under (roughly) the same conditions as the Colts and the disparity in the pressures of the teams' balls is due to the fact that they were intentionally underinflated originally, or b) they were, as you say, inflated to the correct pressure under different conditions and drifted away from the regulation pressure due to a change in temperature. Either w…

Centers also handle the ball on every offensive play. Most centers are intelligent and kinesthetic players who would be as sensitive as the QB to the feeling of the ball. Someone needs to tough-talk the Pats center about this.

Re: The New England Patriots’ prevention of fumbles is nearly impossible

#63

Post by jsyedidia » Mon, Jan 26, 2015, 4:25 PM UTC

Hasu wrote: post #53

jsyedidia wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the BC professor speculated that they over-inflated them. I speculated that they prepared the balls outdoors. The reason for the speculation is that I know the ideal gas law holds. Therefore, if the Colts balls did not deflate when they took them to a colder temperature, there must be an explanation. I think the likeliest explanation is that the gas inside the balls had already equilibrated to an outdoors temperat…

It's not like this is the first time it's ever been cold outside. The New England Patriots play a lot of football, yes? They often do so during the winter months, no? It's exactly what you'd expect from the laws of physics, which is precisely why even if the situation you suggest is the case, the Patriots still knew that the balls would deflate due to the aforementioned extremely predictable laws of physics, and they…

Maybe they didn't know about the ideal gas law. It seems like very few other people do. Maybe they did know about the ideal gas law and took advantage of it. In any case, they followed all the rules "to the letter", at least if you believe they did what they said they did. Most people say that when you follow all the rules, you are not "cheating".