Neil deGrasse Tyson - Admits Mea Culpa -While Still Not Quite Getting it Right

Rob0729 said:

I heard somewhere that air coming through an air pump or air compressor is a lot hotter than the air temperature.

Click to expand...

That's true. A Compressor is doing work squeezing the gas. Squeezed gas is higher preessure and is also controlled by the Ideal Gas Law. So if you raise the pressure of the squeezed Gas, its temperature must also go up. The temperature of the gas inserted into the ingflating ball is higher than room temperature.

Heat and temperature are not the same thing. We need to make a distinction between an amount of heat in a substance, and and its temperature. A glass of water contains a certain amount of heat energy at say room temperature.

The Arctic Ocean contains a lot more heat energy, while its temperature is much lower, because of its large mass of water.

Similarly, the amount of heat energy in that tiny amount of gas inside a football, a few grams at most, is not much compared to the amount of heat energy contained in the bigger mass of the pigskin and bladder, which should be approaching room temperature. So it doesn't heat the ball much. The gas in the ball is "quenched" to approach the temperature of the ball.

But when the entire ball, pigskin, bladdder and trapped presurized air, I agree it cools down on the cold sidelines, it cools down from the higher interior gas temperature of the equalized temperature of the ball and its contained air.

In the case of a football, my experienced engineers expectation is that the effect of higher temperature air would not be much, a few hundreths, or a tenth of a PSI. It is reasonable to treat the football's temperature as a likely proxy for temperature of the gas inside the football.

BradyManny said:

œ"All the scientific minutiae that’€™s been thrown at us, be careful about buying into it.” - Chris Mortensen.

Click to expand...

Spoken like the native shaman about to throw the virgin sacrifice into the volcano.

zydecochris said:

Feynman was truly exceptional. The word genius gets thrown around (for movie directors, offensive coordinators, etc.), but his ability to BOTH advance human understanding of nature (in quantum electrodynamics) and his ability to present complex phenomena in easy to understand ways (his wonderful Feynman lectures, which were used to teach introductory physics from a completely unique approach) is true genius.

He was really one of a kind.

Click to expand...

Everyone in my Freshman Physics had the Feynman lectures to get us through the first year.

My issue with Tyson is that if he does not understand this issue and do the simple math, what does they say about the bigger issue he has to deal with. I personally am starting to question the existence of quasars!

SlowGettingUp said:

Actually a friend of mine who is a very high-end experimental-type astrophysicist (and a Steelers fan) made exactly the same mistake as Tyson. He saw it at once when I pointed out his error last week. It's an easy enough mistake to make for a physicist who is used to dealing with absolute pressures not gauge pressures.
Of course he still whined about the Colt's balls being fine.

I suspect that the rain was colder than 50 degrees and that there might also have been some evaporative cooling because of the wind (although the relative humidity was obviously very high).

Click to expand...

This thread has really become fun, it will probably be the only time in my life that I get to mix my favorite hobby (being a Patsfan) with my day job, thanks people

SlowGettingUp, both you and Bobsmyuncle made a really excellent point that I would like to address. You both point out essentially that "everyone makes mistakes", and so the mistake by Tyson isn't a big deal. I absolutely agree that everyone makes mistakes, in fact, I am an absolute mistake expert. I think I have raised making goofs to an art form.

When I said I couldn't believe that Tyson made that type of freshman physics mistake, what I really should have said is that I absolutely couldn't believe he would publish that mistake publicly (on twitter) without checking it out. It is just so contrary to what a scientist would do.

Everyone has heard the saying about being a professor, "publish or perish". Well, that means that professors/scientists are supposed to be doing original research (theoretical, experimental, or a combination thereof) that nobody has ever done before, and then publishing those results in a refereed journal to advance the state of the art in that scientific field. My papers have been a combination of experiment and theory calculations (to explain the experiment), and for the calculations you check and re-check and re-check the calculations. Then you have other people re-check the calculations. Then you check the calculations again. And again. You write up the paper, and send it out to colleagues and ask them to try to shoot holes in it. When you are finally happy that the research can't be shot down, you submit it to a scientific journal. The journal sends it out to 'referees" who are experts in the field, and those experts decide whether or not the research is correct, and whether it is important enough to publish. If they recommend publication, it eventually gets published, and you have a new refereed publication that advances the state of the art in your field, and you celebrate a bit.

What is just about the most professionally embarrassing thing that could possibly happen? If you discover later on (or, much more likely, another expert in the field discovers later on) that there is an error in the publication. Then you have to tell the journal the paper is in error, and have the same journal print a "Erratum" that is essentially a new short paper describing what you did wrong last time and making the correction. Thank God I've never had to do that, but it is just about the most professionally traumatic and embarrassing thing a scientist could experience. Of course, the dumber the error, the more embarrassing the correction.

So: that brings us back to Tyson. As as nationally recognized host of "COSMOS" (and perceived by the public as a leading "scientist"), he publicly publishes something that gains national attention that has a simple freshman physics error. And, clearly he couldn't be bothered for even the most cursory check of that calculation, and once scientists call him on it he has to post a retraction. That is what I can't believe, that he didn't bother checking his calculation before publishing it. He must have a decent size ego, if that happened to me I don't think I would ever get out of bed again.

Tyson is a theoretical physicist. In other words, he deals with equations and ideal conditions. The problems that this situation present are the kinds of problems that engineers deal with: weather, imperfect gases, non-homogeneous materials. Tyson should let the engineers take this one and stick with making up **** about what the universe looked like when it as a tenth of a second old.

The Brandon Five said:

Tyson is a theoretical physicist. In other words, he deals with equations and ideal conditions. The problems that this situation present are the kinds of problems that engineers deal with: weather, imperfect gases, non-homogeneous materials. Tyson should let the engineers take this one and stick with making up **** about what the universe looked like when it as a tenth of a second old.

Click to expand...

I don't disagree with you, but the problem here is he can't even get a simple theoretical problem correct and even when he corrects himself he still has mistakes. Now I know plenty of engineers who have made the same mistake; one of the differences is that they are not pushing an agenda on national media and they would have someone check their work and get it corrected.

The Brandon Five said:

Tyson is a theoretical physicist. In other words, he deals with equations and ideal conditions. The problems that this situation present are the kinds of problems that engineers deal with: weather, imperfect gases, non-homogeneous materials. Tyson should let the engineers take this one and stick with making up **** about what the universe looked like when it as a tenth of a second old.

Click to expand...

A physicist is not the best expert for this problem. An engineer who works in fluid mechanics, especially incompressible fluids would be far more appropriate. If you have to have a physicist, a theoretical astrophysicist is the last sub-specialty to look to. As you say, at least get an experimentalist. You only go with a bigfoot astrophysicist if you intend to argue from authority rather than from facts.

turkeyneck said:

A physicist is not the best expert for this problem. An engineer who works in fluid mechanics, especially incompressibel fluids would be far more appropriate. If you have to have a physicist, a theoretical astrophysicist is the last sub-specialty to look to. As you say, at least get an experimentalist. You only go with a bigfoot astrophysicist if you intend to argue from authority rather than from facts.

Click to expand...

Fair point, you may be right.

The Brandon Five said:

Tyson is a theoretical physicist. In other words, he deals with equations and ideal conditions. The problems that this situation present are the kinds of problems that engineers deal with: weather, imperfect gases, non-homogeneous materials. Tyson should let the engineers take this one and stick with making up **** about what the universe looked like when it as a tenth of a second old.

Click to expand...

Care to share what you disagree with here?

I think expertise here might be a bit overplayed. There is a sort of difficulty to know where to start if your a laymen, but with the Internet, and plenty of people out there showing the way to calculate pressure, the formulas etc. it shouldn't be too difficult. The formula could really be done by anyone with fairly remedial math skills and a calculator, and the formula could be known by anyone who has taken physics 101.

This isn't some field that people have been investigating for years and now it takes someone on the cutting edge to hash through everything and try to add something nobody has ever seen, or figured out. It's measuring footballs. Maybe if you wanted to know the exact effects of heating to the thousandth you need a physicist, but we're talking gauges that probably aren't accurate to the tenth. That sort of precision will not solve anything here.

I'm just saying there's sort of a law of diminishing returns here, a physicist with 20 years is basically going to do the same math or experiments as everyone else. Whatever else they also know in their heads about the universe isn't going to add anything to the calculation.

Bobsyouruncle said:

I think expertise here might be a bit overplayed. There is a sort of difficulty to know where to start if your a laymen, but with the Internet, and plenty of people out there showing the way to calculate pressure, the formulas etc. it shouldn't be too difficult. The formula could really be done by anyone with fairly remedial math skills and a calculator, and the formula could be known by anyone who has taken physics 101.

This isn't some field that people have been investigating for years and now it takes someone on the cutting edge to hash through everything and try to add something nobody has ever seen, or figured out. It's measuring footballs. Maybe if you wanted to know the exact effects of heating to the thousandth you need a physicist, but we're talking gauges that probably aren't accurate to the tenth. That sort of precision will not solve anything here.

I'm just saying there's sort of a law of diminishing returns here, a physicist with 20 years is basically going to do the same math or experiments as everyone else. Whatever else they also know in their heads about the universe isn't going to add anything to the calculation.

Click to expand...

I was thinking about the issue of the ball expanding when wet and that the ball prep might heat the ball, both of which have been missed or mocked by scientists publicly. An engineer has to deal with all the variables or your plane doesn't land.

turkeyneck said:

A physicist is not the best expert for this problem. An engineer who works in fluid mechanics, especially incompressible fluids would be far more appropriate. If you have to have a physicist, a theoretical astrophysicist is the last sub-specialty to look to. As you say, at least get an experimentalist. You only go with a bigfoot astrophysicist if you intend to argue from authority rather than from facts.

Click to expand...

Hey turkeyneck, you seem to be describing me. FInd someone to get me the facts of this case ( I don't trust the NFL to do that) and I will get you a realistic (kind-of) answer ( for a few hours recompense anyway).

roguepatriot said:

Hey turkeyneck, you seem to be describing me. FInd someone to get me the facts of this case ( I don't trust the NFL to do that) and I will get you a realistic (kind-of) answer ( for a few hours recompense anyway).

Click to expand...

Actually, I was describing me, but I'd be willing to split any fees.

kkpat said:

Bill Burr - Deflategate

Listen to this

Click to expand...

That was pretty damn good, and funny!

How about using some common sense like when you were a kid and took a football outside from your house and played in the damp Fall weather the damn thing lost air after playing for a while!!!!

The Brandon Five said:

Tyson is a theoretical physicist. In other words, he deals with equations and ideal conditions. The problems that this situation present are the kinds of problems that engineers deal with: weather, imperfect gases, non-homogeneous materials. Tyson should let the engineers take this one and stick with making up **** about what the universe looked like when it as a tenth of a second old.

Click to expand...

He butchered the theoretical equation OTOH the Head Smart Labs are engineers and conducted a reasonable experiment to measure what happened to a reasonable approximation.

Guess who get mote attention the careful engineers or the grandstanding blowhards (let's include the nitwit Nye)?