Canal Days

Football Pressure Drop by Temperature

Footballs have three components: a rubber bladder, a leather skin, and the string to tie the skin together.  The leather skin gets harder as temperature drops and can thus hide pressure changes to the user.  Same effect is seen with car and bicycle tires.  The rubber bladder is very pliable and thus expands quickly.  Only about 3 psi of added pressure are needed to cause the bladder to fill totally the volume of the skin that holds it in.  Certainly, in the range of 10 to 15 psi the volume is constant.  Thus the gas laws called Charles’ Law and Boyle’s Law do not apply.

On a similar note, the amount of molecules inside the bladder is important.  The use of the ball in such a violent sports does cause the number of molecules to decrease inside the bladder.  This effect can be analyzed by measuring the pressures immediately before and an hour after a game. This needs to be done inside a room within the stadium to control for temperature.  The effect probably is not more than a 2% loss of molecules.  This translates by Avogadro’s Law into a 2% loss of pressure.

Overall, pressure is directly related to number of molecules and temperature and inversely related to volume.  By the above analysis, we can assume that the number of molecules and the volume do not change much.  Thus pressure varies with temperature for the air in a football.  There are many gas laws to cover all these variables.  The necessary law for footballs is called Gay-Lussac’s Law and is fundamental to the study of gases. It was derived in 1808 by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac.

The Kelvin temperature needs to be used to study changes since it is directly tied to the motion of molecules.  The Kelvin temperature of a 75-degree Fahrenheit room is 297 K.  The Kelvin temperature of a 35-degree Fahrenheit field is 275 K.  This is a normal room temperature.  Halftime was at about 8:25 in Foxboro and the temperature was about 35 F.

The basic gas law will use Pf to mean the final pressure as read on the field.  Pi means the pressure as read indoors.  Tf mean the temperature as read on the field.  Ti means the temperature as read inside.  P means pressure, T temperature, f means final state, and i means initial state.  The mathematical form of the gas law is as follows:

Pf = Pi x (Tf/Ti)

The ratio of the temperatures is 0.926.  That is easy but the pressure to plug in is more difficult.  The NFL stipulates an internal pressure of at minimum 12.5 psi (pounds per square inch).  That however is the gauge pressure reading.  There is normal atmospheric pressure both inside and outside a ball before inflation.  This normal pressure is 14.7 psi.  Inflation merely increases the pressure inside the ball beyond the normal.  At the start of inflation the pressure difference is 0 between inside and outside.  To inflate to the NFL minimum of 12.5 psi means the gauge might read 12.5 psi but the true pressure inside is this plus atmospheric pressure of 14.7.  Thus at minimum there is 27.2 psi inside.  Since there is 14.7 outside the ball due to the atmosphere, the pressure gauge reads the difference of the two so 12.5.  Physics is based upon what is really there so the Pi to use is 27.2 psi.

Use the gas law equation now and you will find that the Pf on the field is 25.2 psi.  Now stick a pressure gauge inside the ball on the field.  The gauge reads the difference between ball pressure and atmospheric pressure.  So 25.2 minus 14.7 which gives 10.5 psi of internal pressure.  This is what the NFL is reporting as the difference.  They stated a pressure drop of 2.0 psi.  The calculations show a drop from 12.5 to 10.5 psi due to the temperature drop.  Thus there is no scandal but rather basic physics at work.  At the half, the footballs were given more air while cold.  This will bring the pressure up to the 12.5 to 13.5 range.  Since the temperature did not change during the second half, there was no pressure change inside the footballs.  When measured directly after the game when cold, they would maintain that pressure.

This analysis is for the New England team.  The Indianapolis team stated that they liked working with footballs at a pressure that gauged at 13.5 psi.  This is an internal pressure of 28.2 psi.  At the same temperature change, the pressure would decrease to 26.1 psi.  The pressure as read by the gauge would be thus 11.4 psi.  This is also under the pressure range as suggested by the NFL for its footballs.  Both decreased due to the temperature in the stadium.  Colts’ footballs would have decreased too with the amount dependant on the location and time at which measurements were taken.  But when were they measured?  Much also depends on the gauge being used.  The table is the probable pressure variation of the footballs with time.  First column is the time, second the Patriots’ pressure, third the Colts’ pressure, fifth the temperature, and sixth the environment.

5 12.5 13.5 75 indoors
6 12.5 13.5 75 indoors
7 11 12 45 on field
8 10.5 11.5 35 on field
9 12.5 11.5 35 air added at 8:30 halftime
10 12.5 11.5 35 on field
11 14.5 13.5 75 indoors

The pressure reading on the Colts’ footballs would have gauged at 11.5 at halftime.  The referees apparently checked all 24 footballs in 10 minutes.  They would have missed on a rough gauge that the Colts’ were at 11.5 and thought it to be 12 psi and thus good enough.  Hopefully, more information will be available soon.

Football Game Balls during the Cold Rainy Championship Game

The Wells Report was released last week and I have spent 6 hours reading it.  The cell phone records of the two aides can be read any way that you care to.  The science is more interesting to me.  The analysis is well done and is correct if one starts with their assumptions.  There are flaws in the assumptions.  They use an inside temperature of 70 F and an outside temperature of 48 F.  Fine but that outside temperature is recorded by an outside bulb that is kept dry.  It is known that very cold rain was falling during most of the first half.  The rain clearly fell on the balls and the ground.  Thus the temperature of the balls and the ground would not be at 48 F but would rather be at about 40 F.  Not all the balls were being used near the end of the first half but the ones that were cycling into the game at that point would have been the coldest and wettest.  Only four of the Patriots balls were below 11.4 psi using the Logo gauge.  These balls were most likely the ones used near the end of the half.  The report details that the ballboys rotated 5 balls into and out of play in a sequence.  The report claims that the balls after this sequence return to a state as if they were like the others.  I claim otherwise.

Eleven of the Patriots footballs and four of the Colts footballs were checked at half time.  The scientists were told to use the Colts balls as a control.  A control should never just be four items out of 12 footballs since how could you determine that you are drawing a representative sample from the bag.  Next, wet footballs warm at a slower rate compared to drier ones.  The Patriots footballs were tested first in the officials’ locker room.  Then the Colts’ footballs were tested.  Thus the Patriots footballs being wetter and colder would thus act if the Ideal Gas Law had decreased their pressure more.  This would also cause a greater variation in the pressure within the Patriots’ footballs since they are being measured during the warming and drying phase compared to the Colts’ footballs which has a chance to warm closer to equilibrium.

Thus I claim as I did months ago.  The Patriots’ footballs were not tampered with.  There is a difference in the Patriots and Colts’ footballs due to environmental properties and timing of the balls being on the field.  Testing the wet Patriot footballs first in that officials’ room is a violation of scientific standards.  Moreover, the temperature change was about 30 F making a large pressure drop possible.  This drop acts on all footballs during that game.  The measurement of 0.6 psi drop between the Patriots and Colts footballs is not significant due to the lack of equal testing.

Pine Cones in the Holyoke First Level Canal

In February, I took pictures like this one of the Holyoke First Level Canal.  The water was so flat that it mirrored the buildings on the other side of the canal.  I was so amazed that day that I picked up three pinecones that were alongside the canal.  One I threw into the canal that day.  The other two I brought home for good luck promising myself that I would return them to the canal someday.  I kept them on a shelf near my bed each side by side of one another.  Tuesday of this week I felt despondent so I decided to return the cones six months after I had taken them.

I went to the same spot along the canal that I had found them.  Plan was to throw the second pinecone into the canal and then after work five hours later to throw the third into the water.  I threw the first in and got ready to ride my bike away.  I noticed that the cone did not move at all even though there was a slight current to the south.  I was a bit irked so I pulled my backpack off again and got the third cone out.  I threw it a bit downstream and a bit closer in then that non-mobile second one.  They were about 7 feet away from each other at the time that the third one hit the water.  The third cone immediately and in a straight line moved toward the second cone while the second cone stayed still.  It was moving upstream and outward.  From seven feet away it directly hit the second cone without wavering a bit.  Both cones stuck together for 5 seconds.  Then they gradually (and finally) moved downstream as one would expect.  They did however stay about 10 inches apart that whole time.

My whole life I have been ever the scientist.  This was the first symbolic act I have ever done in my life.  Using physics, which is the one and only topic that I am good at,  I might find that there actually is a one in a million probability of this happening.  Seeing however that it was a symbolic act by me, it amazed me and still does.  I rode away along that beautiful canal walk.  They have been side by side on my shelf for six months and they seemed to want to continue being with each other even after I threw them into the water.

Civilisation by Kenneth Clark

Civilisation was written to express a view about the rise of modern Europe in a cultural vein and has succeeded.  This book should be a standard text in high school and college.  There should be discussions about this book in many forums.  The tack that I wish to take is that toward what has happened to much of college education in America in the last 30 years.  No longer is there the quest to get a good liberal arts education in order to learn about the physical and cultural world and about one’s self.  There is now only careerism that only leads one to think about oneself and not society as a whole.

The last two professions that depends heavily upon the person obtaining a bachelors degree and no more and also leads into a high level profession are engineering and business.  No other professions have led the Unites States to be a wealthy nation than engineering and business firms.  Often engineers and business people embark on their careers without a concern about their society whether on a regional or a national basis.  This leads to commercialism run amok.  Most engineers and businessmen know little about architecture, history, science, and the arts.

I propose that their education should be radically changed.  Their education should be closer to that of a medical doctor.  Doctors obtain a four year college degree and then go onto a professional degree.  Engineers and business people should all be required to do the same.  This would be for their own good and the good of society.  More science and more arts would make them better engineers and better at business ventures.  Society would also benefit since they would know how to fit engineering projects and business venture more appropriately into a community.

For example how should a bridge be designed to better fit into the cultural landscape of a city or town.  Another how could a store be designed to fit into the architecture of a downtown of a city.  Should there be more car free streets in the downtown of a city or town.  These questions are not being asked enough in the medium and small sized cities and towns of the northeastern USA where there are many architectural treasures.

The book Civilisation fits in since it will help students in these fields learn of the past and learn about Socratic dialogue.  The Middle Ages became a time of little innovation compare to the times that preceded and followed it.  That might be because workers were too narrowly trained and did little innovation.  In recent decades that milieu surrounds us again today.  Employers are hiring people not based on their desire to innovate and to fit their work into the cultural landscape but rather upon their highly refined technical skills.

A better trained professional would alleviate that problem.  They would be better able and have more desire to lead projects that fit into the culture needs of a city or town and not destroy it.

Stories

Civilisation by Kenneth Clark

Pine Cones in the Holyoke First Level Canal

Football Game Balls during the Cold Rainy Championship Game

Football Pressure Drop by Temperature

Poljacik family story

My grand nephew Nicholas was born to my niece Shelby 8 years ago.  He has grandparents of Poljacik – Burke – Saint Andre – Comeau.  The last two lines were written about in two separate stories so this is about the paternal lines.  All tales are unique and this one is no different.

Ján Poljačik came from Kokava nad Rimavicou of Rimavská Sobota province of western Slovakia in 1920 to work in the marble mines of Rutland County Vermont.  He was newly married to Mária Funtjar and they settled in Pittsford of that county and had 9 children.  It might sound difficult to do Slovakian genealogy but when I approached it about 10 months ago it was quite easy.  Most Slovakian immigrants came from tiny villages and moved to tiny villages in the USA.  All to do the same mining job that they knew so well.  This Kokava nad Rimavicou has about 300 people and his ancestors stayed there for centuries.  I simply followed the data trail back to 1810.  Jan was an evangelical Lutheran and this made my job very easy since there would be only about 10 records per year for that faith in that village.  I went through a century of data in two nights.

The Burke line from Vermont was a bit more work since there were families from Massachusetts, Quebec, and Pennsylvania.  By the end, it makes for a nice family tree.  Nicholas did have a unique story on this quarter of his tree.  His 2nd great grandfather George Townsend married 4 times.  That is no big deal in itself.  His third marriage was to Ella Mae Campbell who already had a daughter so he become a step-father.  No big deal still.  Well in 1928, when he was 45 years old, he ran away with this step-daughter Mildred Mae Kingsland.  She was 14 years old.  They went to Buffalo New York and got married there.  She signed the certificate stating that she was 16 and he signed stating he was 34 – both lies.  He was still married to the girl’s mother.  Goodness what a lurid tale – such that is not found very easily.  I have checked my work many times and am sure of the story.  The rest of the Burke quarter of the family is quite genial.

In the end all lines would meet in Rutland County of Vermont and that is where Nicholas extended family still live to this day.

Williams family story

At one time Hampden and Hampshire Counties of Massachusetts were principally farmland.  Towns like Westfield, Southampton, Worthington, and Granville still have farming characteristics but have changed into highly residential.  They were settled as farming towns by the late 1680s by colonial Americans but as emigrants moved into the area in the 1700s and early 1800s, more and more farms were being settled.  New settlers were coming from England, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Scotland.  These patterns are seen in the Williams quarter.  The Williams family itself came from England in about 1830, but the families they married into were all different from one another.  They were the Loomis of Connecticut, the Strong of Southampton, the Dubian of Dalton, the Bill of Southwick, the McDonald of New Brunswick, and the Wingate of Scotland.

 These families would change occupations as America would develop.  They would enter into the manufacturing jobs that booming Westfield would have by the era from 1880 to 1930.  They would keep their family farms but take on other occupations like retail and police work.  These early immigrants to America are called the Yankees since they were of British extraction.  The wave from 1880 to 1920 were from Quebec and Ireland.  These immigrants had lower education but were still hard workers.

The Lamontagne family of Holyoke came to work in the mills of Holyoke by the 1880s.  Some of them worked farms in Agawam and West Springfield but mostly they were mill workers.  In Holyoke, they would marry into the Beauchesne, Monaghan, Cavanaugh, and Gorman families.  This new wave of settlers were Catholic compared to the Yankee farmers who were Protestant.  Families were much larger and education slight.  Virtually all Irish that came to Holyoke were from County Mayo or County Kerry and most of those were from only a few farm towns in Ireland.  Entire villages in Ireland were abandoned especially along the western seacoast.  Most of the Irish would work in paper or fiber mills in Holyoke like the Parsons Paper Mill, Farr Alpaca Company, and the Skinner Silk Mill.

Grant family story

Grime family story

The Grime family of New Bedford can be broken into its four parts: Grime – Brierley – Spoor – Brault.  The Spoor and Brault have been written about extensively before, so here we concentrate on the Grime and Brierley parts.  David Grime immigrated with his family in 1892 from Blackburn of Lancashire County in England to New Bedford of Massachusetts.  He had with him his wife Elizabeth Nowell and their 7 children.  The industrial revolution had started in England in 1760 and stayed strong there until about 1880.  It continued in the small towns of New England from about 1800 to 1850 and then moved to the medium-sized cities.  Lancashire County of England is the heart of industrial England.  Thus when times changed and jobs got scarce it suffered the most.  David Grime was a weaver like most of that region.  He could see the shift in the industry and struck out for the cotton mills of New Bedford.  He would have 3 more children in Massachusetts and the entire family was employed as weavers in the mills.  At least five generations of the Grime family had lived in Blackburn England and had all married at the Blackburn Cathedral.  The children, the 6th generation, would carry on their hard work in the mills of a new country.

Thomas Grime was the first son of David and Elizabeth.  He would first marry Evelyn Saxon in 1908 and they would have three children – Leonard, Reynolds, and Norman.  Evelyn would die after 6 years of marriage and Thomas would remarry.  His second marriage was to Inez Maud Brierley of South Berwick Maine.  Their children were Muriel, Hazel, Thomas, Robert, Annetta, and June.  Robert would marry one of the Spoor sisters in 1953.

Inez Brierley was born to Charles Brierley and Winetta Alice Hilbourn in 1895.  The Brierley family had come to South Berwick by way of Ontario and before that England and Ireland.  The Hilbourn family had been in southern Maine for over 200 years.  They were farmers and also worked the woods as hunters and fishermen.  Old Maine data is easy enough to find.  The South Berwick Historical Society is very active and has an excellent web page.  I was able to find an image of the maternal grandparents of Inez.

Industrialization changes not only the landscape but also the people.  Farming would give way to industry and small towns would become big cities.  South Berwick has not changed much but cities like New Bedford were changed forever.  Former farmers with go there with their traditional values and within a generation even their personal lives would change.  Inez Brierley had 9 siblings but only 3 of them lived past their youth.  A chance at a better life must have thrilled her.

Fernandes family story

Jacintho Fernandes the First was born on Madeira Island in the Atlantic in 1899.  He was born in the small village of Freguezia dos Cunhas of Seitos Anjos Province.  In 1917 he would immigrate on his own to New Bedford to open a grocery.  There he would meet Odilia Rezendes and in 1927 they would marry.  Odilia was one of 8 children of Francisco Medeiros Rezendes and Maria Angelina Mello.  Francisco and Angelina had meet and wed in Santa Maria Island of the Azores in 1894.  They had moved from there to Brazil where they had their first four children.  After 12 years in Brazil, they moved back to Sao Miguel Island of the Azores where they had four more children.  In 1914, Francisco died and Angelina decided to move her family to New Bedford.  They had to travel in steerage during the entirety of the voyage.  Once in New Bedford, they banded together as a family.  Only 4 of the 8 children had children of their own.

Odilia Rezendes and Jacintho Fernandes had 3 children of their own.  The first of whom is Jacintho Fernandes the Second known as Uncle Jesse to most of us.  Like most immigrant families, these families continued to climb the educational and economic ladder.  Neither Jacintho nor Odilia had much education but they made sure that their children did. Jacintho Fernandes would meet a sister of the Spoor family of New Bedford and in 1953 would wed.  The Spoor story was told before.  Their child and they would moved to Dartmouth and participate in the community as teachers.