Any balls measured for psi in last night's cold weather?

pencilneckgeek said:

No, but thermodynamics tells us something. A football has a high surface area to mass ratio, meaning it doesn't take much for a ball to lose it's heat, and as the leather represents 99.9% of the mass of a football (one extra atmosphere of air doesn't weigh much), we can infer that a football that feels cold to the touch has more or less reached it's equilibrium.

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I wouldn't assume that. Just because the very surface of the ball feels cold doesn't mean the cold (or lack of heat, to be more precise) has worked through to the inside surface of the leather, let alone chilled the air. Plus, the air is in a bladder that the leather is sewn around, as I understand it. Any air in the space between the inside of the leather and the outside of the bladder will act as an insulator, further slowing the time between when the outside of the ball feels cold and when the air inside has reached equilibrium with the ambient temp.

Oh trust me they were measured and the fact that nothing has been leaked out tells me the nfl didn't like what they saw.

QuantumMechanic said:

I wouldn't assume that. Just because the very surface of the ball feels cold doesn't mean the cold (or lack of heat, to be more precise) has worked through to the inside surface of the leather, let alone chilled the air. Plus, the air is in a bladder that the leather is sewn around, as I understand it. Any air in the space between the inside of the leather and the outside of the bladder will act as an insulator, further slowing the time between when the outside of the ball feels cold and when the air inside has reached equilibrium with the ambient temp.

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I did forget about the bladder, but I doubt that there is much air space between the bladder and the leather, or the football would have soft spots, because any air outside the bladder could leak out through the pores in the leather, so that insulation is pretty small. There is definitely some amount of time it takes for heat to penetrate the leather & bladder, but both of them are relatively thin, and the specific heat of the air in the football is insignificantly small, so its temperature will be that of the inside of the bladder. My point is simply that on a wet night, such as it was, it wouldn't take an entire half of football for equilibrium conditions to be reached with the ~47-degree air. During the 10 minutes of halftime, that may not be the case, but applying the Ideal Gas Law and assuming equilibrium conditions with the outdoor air moments after bringing the balls inside is not at all unreasonable. Certainly, experimental data such as that collected by the Pats in the days following the opening act of this circus, is desirable, but in the absence of such data, the assumption should be that the ideal gas law works and that scientifically ignorant executives trying to protect their multi-million dollar jobs are not likely to perform experiments to test this assumption, as they are not interested in the truth.

JMC00 said:

Oh trust me they were measured and the fact that nothing has been leaked out tells me the nfl didn't like what they saw.

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I don't think they measured because they can cook the data they want to fit their agenda. I don't think they took the measures in the last afcc game too, where's the film of them taking the measures? There's just a paper with some numbers written on it. If I measure the PSI of a football and then measure it again 5 minutes later in the same environment (not a controlled environment) I can get a slightly different number so for me those numbers written by hand in that paper were made out of someone's ass.

NashuaPats said:

It's really not necessary to do the experiment. The IGL is the IGL. It's not a theory like the NFL thinks it is. I would be curious to see the results during a game when it is raining. The effects of that would be interesting to see. I suspect some of the balls would drop more than an additional 0.1 that Exponent found. I also suspect there will be some variability between the balls as some would be wetter than others which is exactly what happened during the AFC Championship game.

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You didn't ask, but...
The mechanism for that (not proven) is the leather gets looser so their is more volume for the same air to occupy. The "V" in the ideal gas law changes slightly.

JMC00 said:

Oh trust me they were measured and the fact that nothing has been leaked out tells me the nfl didn't like what they saw.

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Exactly what I was thinking. When's the last time the shared any information that didn't help advance some agend?

NYCPatsFan said:

I am sure the NFL* in its pursuit of integrity did this and did not bother to disclose their findings.

But wonder if anyone - at the game or otherwise - attempted this last eve and document how much the psi changed as the weather went down.

I thought some of the media outlets would have certainly tried this but am yet to read about it anywhere. Puzzled because this is an easy - and interesting - way to attract public attention.

Thanks,

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Fair question.

Meanwhile, I'll hold fast to my position that Roger Goodell and the NFL should be punished. And that's after the NEP are refunded their fine and picks & Tom Brady is reimbursed for all legal expenditures.

I can bet that if they did measure and the results were in favor of ideal gas law, we will never seen the or hear the results. If the balls did not lose any pressure, 11 of the results would have been published by ESPN by now.

I'm surprised that none of the local TV or radio didn't do a live experiment and upload the video results

juny said:

I'm surprised that none of the local TV or radio didn't do a live experiment and upload the video results

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The patriots (Krafts) should have done it themselves or hired someone who can be somewhat independent and uploaded the results on their deflategate website. It should have a film crew along all the way as well.
Or they did it and the results were not favorable?

Breadkey said:

I suspect we won't see any results from such IGL experiments due to pending court case. The league would look silly to publish something that undermines it's case.

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No, the hearing is all about process. Goodell claims he can suspend Brady regardless of any evidence. Actual data does not matter.

vuudu said:

The patriots (Krafts) should have done it themselves or hired someone who can be somewhat independent and uploaded the results on their deflategate website. It should have a film crew along all the way as well.
Or they did it and the results were not favorable?

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Nope, they didn't do it "for the good of the 32".. ESPN has no excuse for not putting a fully inflated football on the counter next to a frezing Tirico and Gruden and measure it in the outside elements at the beginning of the game and again at the end....They could have hyped it to keep people's attention and the results would show deflation without human manipulation......but they are ESPN, the NFL's lackey so we know that would never happen...

vuudu said:

I can bet that if they did measure and the results were in favor of ideal gas law, we will never seen the or hear the results. If the balls did not lose any pressure, 11 of the results would have been published by ESPN by now.

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Nonsensical because the If cannot happen. The psi of the balls measured in the locker room at ~ 70 degrees F MUST be lower out on he field at ~40 degrees once the balls reach equilibrium after tens of minutes.

vuudu said:

The patriots (Krafts) should have done it themselves or hired someone who can be somewhat independent and uploaded the results on their deflategate website. It should have a film crew along all the way as well.
Or they did it and the results were not favorable?

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There should be a permanent fixture between the Pats bench and the stands of a table with a row of balls, each gauged, with the gauge readings projected to the big screen throughout the game. That the Krafts did not do this immediately after the accusation and contunuously since shows me that they are not up to the task of fighting the NYJFL propaganda war.

I know about gas laws but to reach the masses you have to make them see it to believe it. A petition should work in this case, get enough signatures and we can have them display results on air. Or we can have some ambitious fans think something up.

Science, meh, that's so 19th century......

Early Merry Christmas to all my Pats fans brethren...print this out and take it to our next home game...

RayClay said:

They called in Clyde Crashcup and Super Dave Osborne to do extensive tests on the balls before and after the game and concluded they did not change at all regardless of temperature and Brady is guilty.

Professor Irwin Corey will be announcing the results at half time of the Ravens Browns game next Monday, hoping that will boost their viewership into the double digits.

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That's a remarkable trip through 60's and 70's pop culture. Professor Irwin Corey, "the World's Foremost Authority," turned 101 years old in July.

Joker said:

Early Merry Christmas to all my Pats fans brethren...print this out and take it to our next home game...

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What about starting a crowd funding to print a ton of copies and rent a helicopter to drop it all over the stadium during the game

Goodell goes up to the podium, leans toward the microphone and says "the PSI readings of footballs from randomly selected 2015 games indicates the PSI measurements of the New England Patriot footballs during the 2014 AFCCG are consistent with properly inflated footballs exposed to temperature and environmental variations".

Who in their right mind actually believes this will happen regardless of the PSI measurements of "randomly" selected 2015 games? It cannot happen. The NFL invested too much political/media capital into the deflategate accusations and prosecution of the punishment. They cannot afford to change their story in any tangible way, they cannot face up to a mistake they have invested soooo ridiculously heavy in. There is virtually none, nada, zero way the NFL can do an about face on the matter of deflategate. They cannot and will not provide any studies, quotes, measurements or speak publicly in any way that would indicate a rethinking of their deflategate conclusions. So everyone can just completely forget any thought of the 2015 PSI measurements or anything the NFL office produces/speaks helping the case for the Patriots' innocence. They'll immediately and instantly eliminate the random ball testing program the moment the PSI readings start hinting at deflategate being a false "prosecution".

If you must have a lone and extremely unlikely scenario where the NFL backtracks away from their previous deflategate actions/stance: Some sort of definitive smoking gun proof ends up inside the NFL exec office in traceable documented form -- and in a way that would concern Goodell too much that the document will make its way to the public. In that case Goodell and a few of his closest inner circle lops would start kneeding and manipulating the whole story of Deflategate in order to size up the right NFL office insider or affiliate insider to make as the most viable fallguy star of their newly manipulated story. But even that would cause Goodell significant blowback for himself -- meaning he would fight tooth and nail to bury this smoking gun from the public. Or, in other words, don't hold your breath waiting for this scenario to ever happen.