StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Cosmic Queries: FIFA World Cup Edition

Episode Date: June 28, 2018

Have you caught the World Cup fever? We’ve got it bad! Hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice sit down with physics professor John Eric Goff and answer your fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the football world.Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Please subscribe to our channels on:Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-scienceApple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360TuneIn: tunein.com/playingwithscienceGooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjqSoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-scienceNOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-fifa-world-cup-edition/Photo Credit: Adidas. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Nice and this is Playing With Science. Because we get constant requests for this we are going to do a cosmic query which means you get the steering wheel you are driving this show. Yes, our listeners are in charge. We are merely servants. Conduits, as you might say. And the great thing is that our show today is all about World Cup and football. We have to call it football because we're talking about soccer and the World Cup. Plus, I told Chuck he can't call it anything else.

I can't call it that way. Not during the World Cup itself. So it's World Cup football. And to help us, of course, we have none other than our soccer expert. Yes. And all-around physics sports expert, I have to tell you. From University of Lynchburg, as of July 1st, that would be Professor Eric Goff. What's happening, Professor Goff?

Oh, I'm just stoked for the World Cup. Really enjoying the early action. Anxious to see what happens with Spain and Portugal, but having a lot of fun talking about this new ball and the science and the World Cup. Yeah, it is. And there is more science than really people can imagine, and this is where we're going to drill down into. But let's start with the ball.

We've touched on it before. It's not likely to be that different from the ball used in terms of the way it performs in Brazil in 2014. Is that correct? That's correct. The mistake of Javalani was not repeated in 2014 and 2018. The ball that we're using now, the Telstar 18, we've tested this, and the aerodynamic properties are very similar to the Brazuca that was used four years ago. So speaking of touching balls, this particular Telstar, is there any physical difference that makes it stand out from the Brazuca, like when you look at the ball itself? from the Brazuca, like when you look at the ball itself? I mean, aside from like the color scheme and the fact that it's black and white and, you know, what are the physical differences of the two balls and what is that going to lead to in terms of performance? Let me talk about the

differences between the two balls. So 2014, you've got this Brazuca right here. It was used in Brazil. this bazooka right here. It was used in Brazil. Six thermally bonded panels. The panel shapes look like little helicopter blades for a couple of them. The colors were quite spectacular. Now we've got 2018's Telstar 18 for Russia, and it's a black and white paying homage to the original Telstar. Six thermally bonded panels as well, but the panel shapes are very different from Bazooka. Yes. And in fact, the total seam length on the Telstar is 30% longer than it is on the Bazooka. And in order to make sure that ball isn't too rough with that added seam length, what

Adidas did was they made the seams a little bit shallower and a little bit narrower, and the surface texturing is a little shorter than it is on the Brazuca. If you hold the Brazuca and you run your fingers along the grooves or just run them along the panels, it feels a little bit rougher. But Telstar was able to make up for that by having a longer seam length. So now what would a longer seam length do? Let's just say that they kept the seam length the same. I'm sorry, not the same. 30% more seam length, but kept the depth and the width the same as in the Brazuca.

So you have a deeper, wider seam, but 30% more of that. What's that going to do to that ball then? So the overall ball would have been rougher compared to the Brazuca. And what that does is it moves what we call, and I know Chuck loves this phrase, the drag crisis. Oh! The drag crisis to a smaller speed. You knew I was waiting for it. The drag crisis for these two balls, about the same.

If you make them a lot rougher, a lot smoother, you change that drag crisis, and it makes the aerodynamics noticeably different for the players. They're going to notice some changes. Whenever you start messing with the seam shapes and the design of the panels, you can't make the aerodynamics exactly the same. But Adidas did a reasonably good job of keeping the drag crisis at about the same speed, and the knuckling's going to look a little bit different. The Telstar's going to fly a little less far than the Brazuca did for really high-speed kicks. So there are some differences like that,

but nothing like 2010. You're not going to notice this massive change in the ball dynamics. And by the way, Professor, a true drag crisis is where I have to lip sync for my life bitch all right anyway you're happy now yes i'm sorry good so do we have any sort of parameters not not absolutely calm down absolutely definitive unless you can if i hit that ball the same the same same power same force each ball do we have a definable distance that we say

will travel further or less than, or within a sort of bandwidth of percentage? Oh, good question, because won't players have to adjust to that? Yes. So if I were to kick one of these balls, or probably get Gary to, I don't think I could do it as well, but if I could kick one of these balls about, say, 78 miles an hour or so off my boot, maybe 25 degrees off the ground, the ball is going to travel about 200 feet, normal atmospheric conditions. The bazooka is going to travel about 8% farther than the Telstar will because the drag coefficient associated with the bazooka is just a tiny bit smaller than it is for the the telstar 18 so these really long kicks the the goalkeepers hitting it down the pitch trying to get their uh you know two-third three-quarter the the pitch uh length on the

kicks those things might you'll notice a little difference in the distance. It will also affect corner kicks. So the corner kick. So the corner kick, you're looking to hit half, just over half the length, the width of a football field. Right. In which case you are going to have to put force through it to carry that distance. Now, as the professor's touched on, if you use the same foot, it doesn't carry as much.

And now players are having to put more force. More force behind it. Right. The more force you put through a ball, a bit like a car. If I put a big V12 engine in a little mini, it's too much power. That's right. You know, you turn left, the engine goes straight on. Exactly.

And so you lose the accuracy. You lose that ability to control the true destination you want to find, if there's that difference. So players, once they get hold of these balls, trust me, they'll be pinging these things around to find out what the maximum length for pass is for them. If there's a team that has a very direct style, say, for instance, Belgium, who are one of the outside favourites for the tournament completely,

they have a rather statuesque striker called Romelu Lukaku. Romelu? Romelu Lukaku. Romelu? Yes. Oh, Professor. So the thing is, you're going to play to him because he's 6'5", and you're going to hit long balls up to him.

So players are going to have to come to terms with that. Anyway, that's enough of me. Let's get to our questions. By the way, Romelu Lukaku sounds delicious. I just feel like I should have it for dinner at some point. I'm going to introduce you to Romelu Lukaku, and if he punches you out, that's fine by me. It's fine with me too.

I'll just be like, I got punched out by Romelu Lukaku. You better go study up on the Krav Maga episode. Oh, good point. Good point, Professor. I'm having for dessert. I got punched out by Romelu Lukaka, and then I had Krav Maga for dessert. Oh, gosh. All right.

Here we go, man. Okay, so Belol Nawaz on Facebook has this question, Professor. How much can the aerodynamics of balls with different leather patterns differ from each other? Can it have any significant effect on the behavior on the ground? Interesting question. Can you follow up? Yeah, because you're talking about with the dribbling now? Well, yeah, with dribbling and also passing across.

And also for the long kicks, can it change what happens when it strikes the ground from the air travel to striking the ground? You know what I mean? Yeah. So I actually just yesterday, we were doing some filming here for another media appearance. But the students we had down at our field here at the University of Lynchburg were kicking these balls around. And I will say that they thought that playing with the World Cup football was a little different from the ones they were using in their high schools. And they quite enjoyed it. And they could tell the difference when they're dribbling because the texturing on the ball surfaces are different.

So I told you the Brazuca, the panels have the slightly higher texturing, and they notice that on their boots when they're dribbling. They actually felt that the Telstar was a little easier to dribble, wasn't quite gripping as hard whenever they were moving the ball back and forth. And whenever they kick it, of course, that's going to play a role. So these synthetic materials that are being used here to make these balls and when you put the surface texturing on there then you go out and dribble them there's a different feel on the ball when you're doing the dribbling based on these surface textures now see that's i think that's the first time i've heard anyone mention the actual i'll

call it stickability yeah of the ball itself. Now, you want to have good, tight, close control, like ball handling in a basketball game. Absolutely. But I think what the professor has highlighted and his students have experienced is you can have too much, and it kind of gets stuck on your boot. It feels tacky almost. It's not moving as well in front of you as you want,

so you can't dribble at the speed you want to dribble at. So that, I think, is what Adidas have done. Because you said just now they've changed the kind of pattern, the raised pattern on the ball for Telstar 18. Is that correct, Professor? That's right. I mean, I'm holding the Brazuca here in one hand and the Telstar 18, and the Brazuca's surface feels rougher because the surface texturing is a little bit taller.

And the grooves are a little bit wider and a little bit deeper than on the Telstar. So the players we had down on our pitch actually noticed the difference just dribbling the two balls, taking turns one after the other. And they felt that the Telstar 18, they had a little bit better control with it. So Gary, let me ask you this. So looking at the current field of play and players, are there any particular players that may benefit from a ball handling standpoint using the Telstar 18? How long do we have? So what the governing body of worldcer, FIFA, have done here is create a ball that will have a certain amount of unpredictability in flight,

which goalkeepers hate. However, the chance of scoring a goal is higher. Now, the next most exciting part of the game is when a player goes on a really fast dribble. Of course. That then has been accentuated and given a better chance by making the surface of the ball less grippy. And therefore, FIFA have, and I credit them for that, along with Adidas, that they've thought this through and created something that achieves that.

So you're going to look at players like, okay, the top three right now in the conversation, Messi, Ronaldo, and Neymar are not in any particular order. That's just the way they came into my head. So they will do things and they have such an intuitive feel for the ball. Right. Give them five minutes with that new ball and they will have worked it out. Right. They'll know exactly how, what, why, where.

Will it be better to be done this way? And they would just, in the smallest little way, adjust how they kick, how they dribble to achieve the dribbling that they would always experience with other balls. And those soft touches could be the difference in juking a player left or right and then being open to make and kick a score, right? It's everything. It's all of a sudden you've given them a software problem to solve and they immediately download. They'll work it out.

They'll calculate. They'll work it out, and it'll all be done through touch. Yeah. And it's just when you see players, and we are soccer players, when you give them balls and change the situation, they are immediate problem solvers. Yeah. They will find a way to bring the best out of that particular ball.

Cool. Yeah. All right. Well, that's exciting stuff. Gary, let me ask you something, Gary. Go ahead, please. You know, playing on Chuck's food theme that Nacho just scored for Spain, and they're up 3-2 now over Portugal.

Ooh. So Spain is really good for, you know, they've been known, they certainly exploited this in 2010, but I mean, they've been known for their shorter passing and their dribbling and all this. So, I mean, whenever you're talking about they can work this thing out and they're good problem solvers, do they want to be good problem solvers? I mean, we don't hand a new basketball to the NBA final participants a month before they play. We don't give a new baseball to the World Series participants. I mean, you know, you're talking about the world's grandest stage.

And, you know, a couple of months ahead of time, here's a new ball you get to learn how to use. They don't get a couple of months. Adidas won't release those balls for a certain period of time. They come onto the market, then they'll work with them. I just think the ball will be the same for every player, every team. It's standardized throughout the whole World Cup tournament. Therefore, it's up to you. It's a problem or not a problem. Right, because it's the same for everybody. Yes. So it's either a problem or not a problem, but it really depends on if it's a problem for you. And it's also something, as an individual, your game might be a player that passes 40 yards quite regularly.

You'll need to know how your technique needs to be changed minutely to get the best strike on that ball. If you're a player that plays it very short or is dribbling, you'll again work out your style. The other thing is you go to a macro level and look at the team, and you highlighted Spain. They have a very short passing game. And there's a standard kind of maxim from many, many years back.

The ball will always move faster than the player. So keep passing the ball. And that destroys opponent systems and takes them out and overloads defense. And that's funny. It's the same way in basketball. Exactly. It's all about ball movement. If you can actually move the ball faster than guys can get to it, then you'll be able to hit an open man and score. Guess who goes and watches lots of basketball games? Soccer coaches. Really? Oh, gosh, yeah.

They are open. I mean, I know soccer coaches in the Premier League, top managers, and they talk to me about NFL. Right. They talk to me about basketball because they see synergy in the pattern of the play. They'll think about tactical movement and how it

relates to their game. Is there something in there that I can borrow? It might give me 1 or 2% extra. They'll take it. They'll take it every time. And by the way, Eric, you just came up with a brilliant idea. You know how we love to change sports here

at Playing With Science. And here's what I'm saying. Every championship game, gotta change the ball right before the championship. Yes! Yes! That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about baseballs with an extra seam thread running through it. See

how that changes the play. That would be pretty awesome. Or maybe football with two sets of laces. Who knows? I don't know. You know what I mean? Like just change the ball right before the championship. Let's see how good you really are. You could probably deflate those a little easier if you had that extra seam in there, you know. I know. That's what I'm saying. And you know what's funny? It probably wouldn't even make a difference. Professor, you're encouraging him. I don't know the Eagles. You're encouraging Chuck,

and that's never really a good thing. We're going to take a break, Professor. When we come back, the knuckleball and the physics within, I think we're going to have to jump straight on that because that is so, so interesting. Let's take that break, and we'll be back with Playing With Science very, very shortly. Don't go away. Welcome back to Playing With Science,

our little cosmic query with a World Cup 2018 specific show with questions programs. Yes, questions that you are throwing in with our very, very good friend, Professor Eric Goff from University of Lynchburg in Virginia. So, Professor, before the break, touched on the knuckleball. If we were to do that in 2010 in South Africa with a Jubilani,

it would be like a beach ball. Do we think a knuckleball with Telstar 18 will have a similar or very different reaction to that kind of kick? So, first of all, what really makes a knuckleball, and I'm just going to use a baseball here as an example, because this is where we get the knuckleball term. So when you hit a baseball, or when you're, sorry, when you're pitching a baseball, if you don't have a lot of spin on it and you release the ball out of your fingers or your knuckles without much spin,

if I've got a little seam on one side and a little smooth patch on the other, the air will separate farther back on the seam than it will on the smooth side, and the ball will get deflected toward the seam. If you have a little bit of a turn, a good knuckleball might have a quarter to a half turn thrown on the way to the plate and if i can switch that orientation so that the seams on the other side and the smooth patch is switched then it moves toward the seam again so that's where the wobble comes from so when you're kicking the soccer ball you kick it right through the center so that you don't get any spin on it. And you

might have an area over here where you've got the groove where the seam is that makes one side a little rougher and maybe just the patch on the other side. So you move toward that rougher side and then the ball will have a little bit of a turn and then it'll start moving back again toward the rough side if it's switched. So that's where this wobble is coming from. So what if I get really clever, maybe not me, but someone clever, and kick through the aperture of the ball where you inflate the ball? Can I then deform the shape and affect the way that the ball reacts to the force I put through it with a kick? Well, there's certainly going to be a little bit of a wobble coming right off the foot. I mean, when you look at the, you know, high speed, high definition, slow motion, the really, you know,

large number of frames per second, we've looked at these things at 2000 frames a second coming off a boot. And there is a little vibration of the ball when you compress it coming off the boot, and then it decompresses. There's a slight vibration, but it's actually a pretty firm ball. I mean, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't stay deformed very long. But as it starts to turn through the air, when you start alternating where the roughness is, even if you try to kick it right through the part where you're going to inflate it, it's not perfectly symmetric. The seam structure is not such that you can find a nice symmetric way to get the boundary layer shed. So you're always going to get some little asymmetric shedding

and cause this thing to wobble when it comes off. So the actual configuration and shape of the panels themselves will have a direct effect if I start to put that much force and if I use the aperture to kind of amplify that. There we go. That's right. So, you know, one of the problems that Jabalani had, we talked about the drag crisis was at too high a speed. Jabalani had. We talked about the drag crisis was at too high a speed. So its panel shapes, the grooves and stuff were not as circuitously rooted as they are on these other two balls. And what you're doing by trying to make that roughness more uniform around the ball is to try to avoid that Jabalani effect, that beach ball effect. So if you kick this Telstar 18

in any different orientation coming off you know the pitch i mean there's you know infinite number of ways i could orient this ball you're going to get all kinds of different wiggling and the fact that these seam shapes and the texturing and the groove depth and all this are different from brazuca means that the way that the knuckling effect is going to take place is actually different so they're still going to notice knuckling effects. They're just going to be wiggling a little bit different from bazooka. So, I mean, even that knuckling has to be practiced and looked at by the players ahead of time. For sure.

I was going to say, because the whole idea is just you're minimizing spin. You're taking away the spin, which is what creates that. So you have to, you have to be able to kick the ball to do that, right? The same way when you throw a knuckleball, you have to, the reason why they call it a knuckleball is because of the way you hold your hand when you throw it, right? So when you're throwing the baseball, you will typically have the ball, you could use two or three, sometimes players will put like a pinky down, they'll even put a thumb behind it that's

not even gripping it. And you'll try to release this thing by pushing the ball out so that it doesn't have any spin. Right. But when you're kicking it, all you really need to do when you're kicking it is just go right through the center of the ball so that you don't have any lever arm off that center. There's no torque to create a spin on the ball. So the thing is, the technique normally for kicking the ball is through the instep of the foot. Right. So you come through, so basically laces. If you watch a lot of players that go for a knuckleball style free kick from a dead ball position, they open up with the inside of the boot and come through the central area, as the professor described on the ball

now the thing is is it better if i have a foot that is slightly smaller or one of those big old fred flintstone's feet that looks enormous exactly well certainly if you've got a a larger foot i would think you'd be able to you know do the spin a little bit better you could got a larger foot, I would think you'd be able to, you know, do the spin a little bit better. You could get a little bit more friction between the ball and your foot whenever you're spinning because you've got more contact with the boot and the ball. Is there ever a time that you kick the ball with your toe? Yes. It's called a toe poke. And invariably, it is a moment of desperation.

Really? Yes. It's not a drag crisis. It's a moment of desperation where you cannot bend your leg back, engage the lever and get a clean strike and sweep through the ball to kick it. You are now getting the space that you're about to play in gets condensed by players coming in. And particularly in front of

goal if i'm a short distance from the goal and i don't have time to pull my leg back and swing i'll just stab it with my toe gotcha and hope because you you lack complete control because there's such a minimal amount of surface contact with the ball right that's the way it is so unless the professor has a more academic thought to that. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Gary, but whenever you see a lot of toe kicks, do they typically go a little bit lower than the center mass? Do you see a lot of backspin with the ball?

I think because I said it's a moment of desperation, you're not conscious of going underneath. You're just stabbing at the ball because you have to execute that ball's movement immediately. So you don't have the time to think, you just stab it. Because if you get that little bit of backspin on it, it has that kind of sail effect because now you got this magnus force with an upward component trying to give the ball a little bit of a rise. So if you're like chipping as you

would as a golfer out of the bunker and dropping it into a spot on the green, you're able to take that swing, you get right underneath the ball and you get that backspin on it, which goes upwards, but there's no power involved because you're not putting the power through the central area of the ball. You're going underneath it, dissipating the power, but causing that spinning effect. That would inquire me to have a lot of time to swing. With a tongue poke, I don't have that time. I am so time poor, hence the point of desperation. Right.

So basically, you're kicking and hoping. That's it. Absolutely. So it's a clearance just to get rid of the ball from your goal, or it's an attempt to score in their goal just by having no time or space to operate in. Cool. All right. All right, next question up.

All right, let's move on. This is Michael Schmick from Facebook, and he wants to know this. Why do we Americans know that soccer is awful, yet everyone else thinks it's not? Professor, what are the laws of physics to describe this phenomenon best? Okay, well, let me give you this to ponder. Think about what a organization FIFA is, not that we've ever used the word corrupt or anything like that, but we're going to need FIFA to come in and help us better our relations between Mexico and Canada come 2026. So that's my physics reply to the beauty of what soccer is going to give us in 2026 when Canada, US and Mexico are hosting the World Cup. Okay. Football, soccer, your preference

is yours. I prefer football. Has the capacity to bring people together in such a wonderful way. And hopefully, as the professor has highlighted, it will do exactly that prior to the World Cup in 2026. That's right. So take that, Michael, you hater. No, no. Well, Michael asked a question, and Michael now has an answer that he can choose to like or dislike. You guys are so diplomatic, man. Aren't we? Gosh, I love it. I mean, you got to get this stuff when you're young, right? I mean, you know, we in the U.S. grew up with things

like football and basketball and baseball. And then, you know, those become the sports and the timing of the sports you get used to, how quickly goals are scored in basketball and the pace of the games. And then you watch something else where you don't see scoring quite as often and it has a slow feel to it. But give it a little time. You know, it is a beautiful game. You know, there's a lot of intricacies and a lot of athletic talent on display when there's no goal being scored. It's a fun game to watch. It's funny. When American football came to the UK, people just saw big guys hitting each other and they didn't look beyond.

Right. Just saw that line of scrimmage and nothing else. It looks like a game of brute force and nothing else. And if you come to the UK now and Europe, there are so many NFL fans. There's such a desire to see NFL games live, let alone on TV. And the same I find here in the US for soccer, for football. There are so many clubs, so many teams. It's across ages and genders.

There is such a presence and desire for the game here. But it's not a case of it will take off. I think it's taken off. When you have that many clubs, that many participants, it's here. Just in the light of NFL and NBA, it looks small. Yes. Because they are two massive, massive properties. Absolutely.

Yeah. You you see the NFL playing in London and other places. They're trying to get the game a lot more known internationally. Yeah, we have NFL games and NBA games in London. And long may it continue. And I think we may even find that an NFL team gets based sometime in the near future in London, which would be very, very interesting. Yeah, because the travel time from the East Coast is the same going basically to London as it is to go to the West Coast. Pretty cool, man. Yeah. You could stop off in Iceland and hop in the Blue Lagoon on your way over.

Or not. I'm looking forward to seeing the London Cockneys play the New England Patriots. Yes. Oh, my word. Let's take a break. It'd be like Lexington and Concord all over again, wouldn't it?

Except this time I'm actually rooting for London. What a surprise. Let's take that break. More from the good professor and football, soccer, and the World Cup when we come back. Stick around. We'll be back very, very shortly. Welcome back to Playing With Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly. Chuck Nice.

And of course, this is our Cosmic Queries World Cup special for 2018 and Russia. So if you've got some thoughts, be quick. We've got the good professor, Professor Eric Goff from the University of Lynchburg in Virginia, author of Gold Medal of Physics. That's right. One of our Christmas specials, if I don't remember. Yes, it was.

Yes, it was. Exactly. Hey, how about Diana Klukova? Klukova? Is that right? Klukova. Klukva. Klukva. Is that right? Klukova. Klukova. There you go.

Yes. And speaking of Russia, Diana Klukova, my God. She says, I've been to Russia in the summer, and it's hard to sleep with so many hours of daylight. Does this have an effect on the players' biorhythms, especially for teams closer to the equator where they aren't accustomed to seasonal changes and daylight hours?

Oh, that's interesting, Professor, because we've got a number of venues in the World Cup this year, such as St. Petersburg, which at this time of the year, with their northern latitude, the sun's not going to set. And if you've got games during an evening kickoff, you're looking up and you're thinking, it should be dark now. What's going on? And if you're trying to sleep and if you've got games during the evening an evening kickoff you're looking up

and you think it should be dark now what's going on and if you're trying to sleep and it's still daylight it's going to mess with particularly people who have never experienced that in their lives before have you got a thought on that one professor well a lot of the stadia that i've seen they the openings are such that i think the sun's going to be pretty low on the horizon. So, uh, I don't know that they're going to get a lot of, uh, you know,

strange shadows or anything like that. But as far as, uh, sleeping and stuff, uh, yeah, I mean, uh,

you know, I've, I've been in higher latitudes and, and it is kind of challenging to get used to where, uh, you're used to being dark at a certain time. And then if it's not, you just don't feel like going to sleep. Right.

Yeah. It's interesting. Equatorial countries where the sun will set that much sooner in the day. Right. If they have never experienced that before, it is going to potentially mess with their whole biorhythms for sure. So I believe the answer here is blackout curtains. That's what these teams better travel with.

Especially in the morning when it starts getting light about four o'clock or so. Absolutely. So where do you think is the best and worst place to play? I'm not talking about from a biorhythm standpoint. When you said, when you talked about environmental factors, that makes me think about weather conditions and how that might come into, where would the best and worst place be to play football? I'm talking on the planet. I'm not just talking this World Cup series here, on the planet. Where would the best and worst place to be to play the game? Okay, Professor, and I'll have a thought after you've given your thoughts. Well, I mean, that's an interesting question

because if you're talking about worst as being connected to lethal, I don't know that I'd want to be playing at the polls. You know, you got to kick a few penguins out of the way, I guess, if you're down in Antarctica, but you certainly wouldn't want to try playing down there. I mean, I know in 2010, you had about half the matches were played at altitude and Spain had a huge advantage

also based on the places where they played and where Netherlands played. If you're playing a mixture of your matches at altitude and some at sea level, that can really mess with you as well. I mean, if you're playing it at a mile high, I mean, if you're playing in like Mexico City or someplace like that, you can kick the ball with more speed because you've got less air resistance on it, but it's not going to curve as much. Your Magnus force is going to go down. So just like a pitcher pitching in Colorado has a better fastball, but doesn't have a, as good a curve ball. You know, if you start playing at elevation and you're used to a sea level environment, the whole type of kicking that you're going to be involved with at that high elevation is going to change. But yeah, I'd

prefer to stay away from the poles. I think from my point of view, if you know you're going to be playing games at altitude, you've then got to go and train to acclimatize to that thinness of oxygen. And then if you're coming down to sea level, well, that's a bonus because your body's acclimatized to taking in more oxygen. But if you have to go backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, which over the course of a couple of weeks, you might find yourself playing in three different locations, two maybe altitude, one maybe sea level, that can play with things. But I think back four years ago to Brazil and Manaus was one of the locations.

And that's Amazonian rainforest. Nice and thick and humid, lots of moisture in the air. You are going to lose weight naturally in a game because of sweat and everything like that. If you then put somebody who's running, I don't know what, 15 kilometers in a game, they're going to lose an awful lot of weight. And that then distresses the body quite intensely. So what happens is it's not so much that you can't prepare for a game. It's how you prepare to play for the next game and the recovery procedures that you go through. Right. So let me ask you this. How do you guys hydrate during a game? When you're playing a match, you don't get these breaks like you do in other sports.

There's no, you know, you have timeouts in other sports. You have, you know, TV timeouts. You have a, with this kind, how do you hydrate? What happened was they came to the point where they thought this is going to be critical for elite athletes.

Don't forget, these players are playing for their country, but every day of the week, they are club players. So the clubs have a greater say in their ownership than they do for the national team. Yeah, absolutely. You can play for pride all you want, but I'm paying your check.

And that conversation has been had a number of times. Oh, I'm sure. So what they have is a two-minute break during each half to hydrate. And I think that's a vital thing going forward. And I think what we might find, and don't forget, this World Cup is just about underway in Russia 2018.

In four years' time, we're going to be seeing a World Cup, as far as we know right now, in Qatar, in the United Arab Emirates. That's going to ramp up the heat and the distress even more. We might find, we might not, that in the future we have four quarters. And that way you're allowed to work your squad that much better. And they're not just because the players are becoming more and more athletic. Right.

And therefore you're taking more and more out of their bodies. So to just make them play for 45 minutes solid, ouch. Yeah. Don't forget that the World Cup in Qatar is going to be played late November to December. I mean, they're not playing in the full summer months there. And that's another issue because that's smack bang in the middle. So you mean it'll only be 90 degrees instead of 128 degrees? Is that what you're saying? I'll take that. issue because that smack bang in the middle. So you mean it'll only be 90 degrees instead of 128 degrees?

Is that what you're saying? I'll take that. The thing is, Professor, the big powerhouse clubs in Europe, and they are the biggest clubs in the world, that is right in the middle of their season. Yeah. And you're not just taking them out for the tournament. You are going to have tournament preparation. And then once they finish that tournament, you're going to have tournament preparation. And then once they finish that tournament, you're going to drag them back and put them straight. They're going to need time to recover from such an intensity. I still think the big clubs in Europe are going to have a lot of things to discuss with FIFA regarding a World Cup in that part of the world. Sweet. All right. Hey, Josh Masofiliak wants to know this.

You get all the good names. I got the good names. Josh Masofiliak, who says, are all fields made out of the same identical type of grass and can different surfaces make a difference in the way the game is played and the outcome? That's a great question. It is.

Because, you know, we have that in football. We have natural turf and we have astroturf. And then you have all different types of grades of astroturf. And then you have different types of grass as well. So what kind of deal is that going to make for the ball and the players? And, you know. So, you know, different stadia have different turf. I mean, they're different synthetic turf manufacturers.

You know, one of the kicks that I looked at, let's see, this would have been back in February of this year, was when Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo on Valentine's Day in the 45th minute, and he blasted a ball into the side of the net. And it looked like when he planted his boot, that the turf had come up a little bit and they were calling this, you know, Ronaldo's, uh, black magic that he could kind of approach the ball and that the ball would look like it was popping off the turf. Uh, but if you know exactly where the seam is in the turf, you can get, as he did, he planted a foot, his left foot down,

and you can see the ball rising slightly off the turf when his right foot comes down to smack it. So wait a minute, are you talking about like a seesaw effect? Like he slapped down on the turf itself, which caused... So right when the ball is placed on the turf, then his left foot plants. And when that plant happened right at the seam where the turf joined another bit of the turf, it caused a little wrinkle in the turf and it kicked the ball out slightly. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So it acts as a launcher for the ball itself. I don't think that's intentional. So what I'm thinking here is like you've got the crust

on a lava flow, right? And that's mobile. It's not fixed to the rest. So once he's planted his foot next to the ball, if there's a little bit of looseness in the top surface, top layer of turf. Right. It causes the wrinkle there. Yeah, because the pressure, he's not just going to tip his toe up and kick it. No. He's going to be slamming right down to anchor his body. He's going to use that, and Professor, correct me if I get my science completely wrong here, correction coming. He's going to anchor that down so as he can pivot through with his right foot. In doing so, if there's any looseness in the turf, that's going to just push itself up. And then that might just inadvertently or, as it is, positively bring the ball up. And it's almost like an automatic tee rising out of the ground.

It's like a tee. It's a tee and the ball up for you. Yeah. Which means, of course, you're going to get more power on the kick and you're going to get a completely different reaction to the ball just resting on the ground, right? a completely different reaction to the ball just resting on the ground, right? See, the thing is, don't forget, soccer fields, football fields, will be generic grass types of that region, that continent, that area, that tropical zone, temperate zone, or whatever it is. But there's a lot more standardized.

Certain grasses are grown. And then you can find that there is a certain hybrid where there's some gels in there that just keep the grass together. And you find that a lot of the top fields that are in play now don't wear out. They're manicured. They're precise. Even to the height of the grass. The height of the grass is cut to a specific dimension under the instructions of fifa children in labor camps no i'm joking go ahead no children in labor camps no they have grounds

keepers and so they will specify correct me you might know professor i think it's 27 millimeters you gotta be kidding me no 27 millimeters and that's that so the thing is back in the day when i was playing if we were playing a team that played a lot of football on the ground like a lot of quick passing we'd leave the grass long oh yeah that was totally screwing up their game absolutely yeah i mean that used to happen in baseball right i mean used to weren't the dodgers uh accused sometimes of having the grass a little long on you know with like slowing down for months and stuff when they used to be a real running team like back in the 60s and stuff

i mean you know that yeah you can play with turf and all kinds of different sports professor have you got any thought have you i know you modeled a tour de france which is something that is i find incredibly impressive have you done anything similar for this World Cup? No, I mean, it's a lot different trying to model a football match. I mean, with the Tour de France, you have a terrain, you know where the cyclists are going to be, you know what the altitudes are going to be, you have all kinds of information that you can put in there. And you don't know what the Peloton is going to do or team strategies. But, you know, you have the route and you know ahead of time what a typical cyclist, elite cyclist, can output with power. But, I mean, something like this, it's a, you know, you're talking about playing an Xbox or, you know, some kind of video game and just simulating it, you know, a couple hundred

times like that as, and, you know, playing statistics is probably the best way you could do it. Too many variables, do you think? Oh yeah. I mean, you know, with, with a Tour de France, I mean, they're following a route. I mean, you don't know which way the players are going to be moving at any given time on, on the pitch. So,, you know, I think it's a much harder problem to try to actually model that ahead of time. Interesting. It's a story, but it's as of before kickoff, yet untold. There you go. With the Tour de France, as the professor was highlighting, you kind of know what's happening

with a football game, anything within a certain parameters. Nice. Yeah. Well, the one thing we always know is that Ronaldo's going to be adorable. Oh, Professor, thank you for your time. I'm going to have to leave you with that. You're going to go on your own. Right.

So, Professor, thank you once again, Professor Eric Goff. You're welcome. Always glad to talk about it. It's a pleasure. Thank you. From the University of Lynchburg in Virginia. So I'm going to leave Chuck to go off and have dreams, wonderful dreams about Cristiano Ronaldo.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Apparently not. I've been Gary O'Reilly. And I'm still Chuck Nice. Number one Cristiano Ronaldo fan, allegedly. Right, this has been Playing With Science. Been a pleasure to have your company, and we look forward to your company in the very near future.

I think I'm gonna take off my shirt. you you you