Quarterback Throws and a Pulsar Goes

January 30, 2013

Whether you are a football fan or not, you probably know that this Sunday is the Superbowl. In addition to all of the commercial watching and snack eating, we also find Superbowl Sunday to be a good excuse to mull over the science behind the game.

Image Credit: http://www.nbclearn.com/

For example, let's think about the passes that will be thrown from each of the quarterbacks. It's not easy to connect with receivers during a football game – and not just because there are 300-pound linemen trying to get to the quarterback. It's also complicated because of the physics behind the throw. A few years ago, NBC put together a series of videos on the science of football. Luckily, they are still available.

We found the one on vectors to be very interesting. The whole discussion about determining speed and angles and directions of objects got us thinking about moving objects in other settings. For example, astronomers have found evidence for pulsars (rotating dense stars) being ejected from the site of a supernova explosion at potentially millions of miles per hour. Scientists can calculate the speed and direction of these objects—in other words, what vector they are traveling on.

Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/J.Tomsick et al & ESA/XMM-Newton, Optical: DSS; IR: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF

Think about how fast the quarterback is throwing the ball while you are watching this Sunday's big game. And then remember that the same physics is in play on a much bigger scale elsewhere in the Universe.

-Megan Watzke, Chandra/HTE