What happens when football’s greatest quarterback teams up with one of YouTube’s biggest science channels? We got our answer this week as Tom Brady and Veritasium took a ludicrously deep dive into the physics of a football itself to explore everything from the exact impact of throwing a tight spiral to a duck, and
Obviously we all know the basic principle behind spinning the ball. It’s the same as a bullet coming out of a gun, as it reduces wind resistance, drag coefficient and allows the ball to travel further. What’s interesting, however, is exactly how much of a difference this makes — as is explored in the video.
It shows that a ball which ends up tumbling end-over-end loses ten-times as much momentum as a ball thrown with a spiral. So while NFL players absolutely have impressive arm strength, more technique goes into it than anything else. Which is why Brady was able to have so much success for so many years.
There’s even a fascinating segment on how footballs are fundamentally paradoxical, because they shouldn’t arc from pointing up to pointing down on a deep ball like an arrow does, because rather than being front-weighted, their center of mass is distributed equally across the football’s center axis. This is backed up with a research paper from physicists at MIT and the University of Nebraska titled “The Paradox of the Tight Spiral Pass in American Football: A Simple Resolution.”
It’s an absolutely fascinating example of applying science to sports, and when it comes to this topic we would be remiss not to mention John Brenkus. For so many of us Brenkus and “Sports Science” on ESPN was our first taste of physics being applied to sports, and it made our nerdy love of sports even more pronounced. Brenkus passed away this week after a long battle with depression, and his influence on the world of sports will stand forever.
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