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Last updated on June 10th, 2017 at 06:47 am
Want to win $1.25 million? Then simply locate a dog with stripes. It’s that easy! Well, apart from certain “extinction” issues.
Also in this week’s Bulletin: big fast Australian footballers. Why are they big? How fast are they? What the hell am I talking about? Click and read.
UPDATE. Oh no! Number trouble is apparent. Checks and corrections will be made.
- I would love to see them find one, but I am not holding my breath.Posted by Crusader on 03/23 at 12:04 PM • permalink
- Up there (25.5 kmh), Cazaly! Get in (13.7 kmh) and fight! Have the researchers determined if my Philadelphia Eagles come out of the huddle yet?Posted by chinesearithmetic on 03/23 at 01:11 PM • permalink
- Tim,
as a dedicated AFL enthusiast and an Essendon supporter since 1949 when my Dad took me to Windy Hill to see John Coleman at his best, I have to wonder whether today’s faster, higher, stronger players are “chemically enhanced” as is the case with most North American sports.
Posted by Jack from Montreal on 03/23 at 01:13 PM • permalink
- “uniformly enormous?” at 6’2” 195lbs. Get a grip!
I’ve got three nephews. The oldest brother is 21 years old and 6’4” 220lb , the next oldest is 19 years old 6’6 and 240lbs the youngest who will graduate high school in May is 18 years old 6’7 and weighs 260lbs.
For fun they benchpress cattle.
Posted by joe bagadonuts on 03/23 at 04:36 PM • permalink
- “For fun they benchpress cattle”
(I hope they flip the cattle first)
Yeah but can they run?
If so we’ve got a new rugby team that could use ‘em.
Posted by underscore on 03/23 at 05:00 PM • permalink
- I think there’s one in a hospice in Florida. Seems to be in dire condition, though; glad to see that people care enough to keep it alive.
Oops! That creature in the hospice is just some retarded lady, and they aren’t trying to keep her from going extinct. Never mind.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 03/23 at 05:55 PM • permalink
- Razor: Also explains why my wife has become so enthusiastic about football in the last 10 years. Can’t seem to remember any interest when I was playing amateurs.Posted by Dean McAskil on 03/23 at 08:39 PM • permalink
- OK. A drooling near-corpse, then. That better?Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 03/23 at 09:29 PM • permalink
A frontal collision between two 88kg players each travelling at 30kmh involves more than twice as much energy as a similar collision between two 80kg players.
Kinetic energy of 80Kg player @ 30kmh = 0.5*m*v^2 = 2775.5Joules
Kinetic energy of 88Kg player @ 30kmh = 0.5*m*v^2 = 3053Joules, or 10% more.So how can their be twice as much energy involved?
Or don’t the laws of physics apply down in Mexico?
Wombatas
- Dave S.: so how should we describe you after you’ve had a few?Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 03/23 at 09:55 PM • permalink
- Where’s my cheque? Pretty bloody convincing I reckon.
- Time’s running out- cough up or Toby the Thycaline gets it.
- Wombat,
These are the calculations we used, as supplied and explained by a maths guy. Are they wrong?
80 kilos x 8.046m/s
therefore F = 643.68 newtonsThe energy associated with each object = half mass times (velocity squared). The result is expressed in joules.
Therefore: 0.5 x 80 kilos x (8.046 squared)
Equals: 0.5 x 80 x 64.738116
40 x 64.738116
The energy of each object is 2589.52464 joules.
Making the same calculations for objects travelling at the same speed, but weighing 88 kilos:
88 kilos times 8.046 squared = 5696.954208 joules.
Therefore the two objects are approaching each other with 5696.95 joules of energy.
- Tim,
Firstly, F=ma, not mv. There is no acceleration that I am aware of. This equation shouldn’t even appear here if we are concerned about energy.
Secondly, you are either comparing the energy of one footballer or two footballers.
If you are concerned with two footballers, you need to compare 2*2589=5178 Joules with your correct figure of 5696.95 Joules. Or 10% more, as wombatas correctly stated.
FWIW I’m an electrical engineer.
- Another thing… how do you know that this “bigger, faster stronger” thing isn’t just athletes padding their stats?
While youths have gotten bigger (it might have peaked though) I’m a bit skeptical. When journalists write this sort of stuff it creates a lot of pressure for kids to pad their stats. And this occurs in all sports. Say you are 5’10 but have a killer game, you list 6’0 on the resume. The coach interviews you, sees your game, you’re on the team.
There is absolutely zero pressure to change the stats once you are part of the team either. For one thing, it intimidates the other team. Another, it guarantees you lied in the first place. Lastly, women like taller guys. This is not just confined to AFL, it occurs in all sports.
If you want to do some real investigative journalism, I suggest you get out the ruler and pay a visit to the local AFL team to compare actual heights with those claimed. I bet you’ll be in for a surprise.
- Tim, it looks like you forgot to multiply the second equation by 0.5.
0.5 x 80 x 8.046^2
vs
88 x 8.046^2
Also, the number of significant digits is incorrect; and in the first relationship, M x v does not yeild force in newtons: it is instead the equation for momentum.
Posted by John Nowak on 03/24 at 03:44 AM • permalink
- taspundit I disagree. I am 6″1’, but on the few occasions I have found myself standing near a group of AFL professional players I found out what it must feel like to be 5″8’ average height. Not that I’m looking up at everybody, it’s just that I’m used to being able to see over a crowd.
Heave ho, here we go Dockers.
Posted by Dean McAskil on 03/24 at 03:53 AM • permalink
- I found out what it must feel like to be 5″8’ average height. Felt very claustrophobic in that crowd.Posted by Dean McAskil on 03/24 at 03:55 AM • permalink
- Dean, perhaps you are right. Still, I would be highly surprised to find that there wasn’t stat padding going on. It only takes an inch here and there to bump up the average.
I’m 6’0” myself. That’s slightly taller than average height. I certainly don’t consider myself to be tall. But certainly tall enough.
Perhaps my bias is related to tennis, my chosen sport. I keep hearing about these “taller, bigger, stronger players”, yet haven’t seen much evidence of this. There is no way Hewitt is as tall as he claims to be (5’11″). There is also no way Agassi can bench press remotely anything near what he has claimed. Yet Agassi is one of the best players of the modern era at 5’11.5”, and Hewitt is certainly a lot better than many of the one/no championship wonders.
I know basketball is rife with stat padding. I used to know of a guy who would say that he was a “real 6’7”, impressive enough on it’s own, he didn’t feel the need to lie about being 7 feet tall.
As to AFL, I have no proof but if there is a widespread belief that taller, bigger players are better, somehow you are going to find that on the resumes, which find their way into the official figures.
- On one hand I am completley with Dean McAskill – I am 185cm/6″1’ and no longer feel tall when standing around AFL footballers. Look at Juddy – same height as me but not considered a tall footballer (and that’s about where any comparison ends, unfortunately.) On the other hand I don’t support a joke team.
We’re the Eagles,
West Coast Eagles…
- To clarify, while I believe that there is a definite trend towards taller, bigger (and stronger) AFL players, I question if it’s as much as what the official stats would say.
Chances are that in addition to the mean height moving upwards there is also an increase in competition with recruiting. Sport is big business these days. And scouts are smart. They know that all else being equal, the taller player is probably better. Perhaps 25 years ago this wasn’t the case as much.
6’1, a lie and a foot in the door is way better than being a skillful, honest 5’10 with no chance of being drafted.
Players like Akermanis (at most 5’10” – 5’10 is official IIRC) are still going to be in demand in 20 years time, because of their sheer skill. If only he wouldn’t give away free kicks in grand finals…
- As an American who used to have season tickets for the Swans, this article was interesting to me. I know that many college basketball players in the US have their height padded (usually by using their height in court shoes) so I think there may be _some_ exaggeration in the AFL stats.
At the same time, having once run into NBA player Andre Miller (literally; I was in San Antonio the night before the 1998 Final Four, turned a corner on the River Walk, and ran right into him) I know some players are bigger than they say. I’m a legitimate 6’1�?, but Miller (listed at 6’2″) towered over me, plus he was half-again as wide as I was!
My Swans tickets were damned close to the field (south 20m line in the SCG). There are a lot of *big* AFL players, but most didn’t seem as big as me, honestly.
I did a quick Google comparison, for those interested. Apparently the average for NFL players (and I’d maintain that the standard deviation is much greater than in the AFL) is 6’1.5�?, *245* lbs.
Anyway, Tim, you *are* off by a factor of .5 in your force calculations.
Posted by dnewlander on 03/24 at 06:20 AM • permalink
- With improved nutrition, it becomes more likely that a person who used to carry 185 pounds comfortably is now packing an extra 15 or so. Then they are better-trained as coaching techniques improve, and physically stronger and quicker because of newer exercises designed specifically for toning, fast-twitch muscle fibers, etc. (And we have yet to consider, er, chemical enhancements.)
In terms of baseball – there used to be players who looked, well, like me (just shy of 6’, about 155#). I couldn’t hit 10 homers from second base. And now? This post from December back at the Hive gives some statistical observations.
- I think we can safely assume that many AFL players use androgens. Heavy androgen use does seem to have risks. but remember that these are powerlifters:
linkI tend to doubt that AFL footballers are going to be taking them in the quantities that athletes in power sports like American football and baseball need to take, simply because of the amount of running they do. The same with sprinting – if you read Charlie Francis’ book Speed Trap, he states that the amount of androgen usage with Ben Johnson was not very high. Pro bodybuilders are a different story. Their job is mainly to grow as much muscle mass as possible, more like the beef industry.
Personally, since there is bugger all chance of eliminating it, I think we should just enjoy the spectacle that those enhanced athletes provide and be thankful for the risks they take. It is more than made up for it by the lifestyle they lead.
But the public want to believe what they want to believe. They want to see speed, power, records broken. They also want to believe that athletes are drug free. Hence most sporting bodies say they test, but it won’t be very rigorous. And even if it were, there is a lot of money at stake and chemists can keep one step ahead of testers, so there will still be chemical (and probably soon, gene) assistance.
- Re athleticism of footballers, we should not necessarily deduce that enhancements are involved. Some of you may have read Stephen J Gould’s work on the “pursuit of excellence”, perhaps his statistical analysis of baseball batting averages and the tendency toward the perfect score. Gould showed that performance continually improves, even though the rate of that increase declines as we draw nearer to the ultimate level.
The public may want speed and power, but the gang of yobbos who join me in the outer also want to see characters and team play – the biceps aren’t the be all.
- Tim,
A real maths/physics guy would actually immediately recognise that E=0.5m*v*v,
and that as v is the same for both examples, E varies according to mass. If mass is 10% higher, than E is also 10% higher. Q.E.D.
(You might want to check with Tim Lambert, he has a degree in Maths.)
But enough of this boring science stuff, let’s discuss a more interesting issue, who are tougher and more rugged? Aerial ping-pongers or rubgy players (either species)? In my book there’s no comparison.
Rugby players win, hands down!
p.s.
(Just look at what Mal Meninga did to that icon of AFL toughness, Mark Jackson, in that charity boxing match!)
- Jacko sure made a fool of himself then. Big Mal effortlessly decked him. Hopefully Jacko has now given up challenging anyone and everyone to a punch-up.
In a flipside situation, I was greatly amused seeing Rugby League hard man “The Chief” taking a bit of fun in the ring too seriously. Being what he is, he tried real hard to smash the pro boxer he was sparring with. Once the boxer, half Chief’s size, got the message that it was really on – he put him to sleep with one jab.
Posted by underscore on 03/25 at 05:54 PM • permalink
If mass is 10% higher, than E is also 10% higher. Q.E.D.
Damn! I was gonna design an All-Meat Internal Combustion Engine based on this AFL exponential energy increase.
Posted by underscore on 03/25 at 06:01 PM • permalink
- underscore: That reminds me of one of my fave cartoons of all time, Monty. He and robotman are testing out a perpetual motion machine (which looks something like a Rube Goldberg machine). It starts spinning… and then stops. They stop and stare for a while. Robotman says “I think it needs some more oil.” Gotta love it.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s where the people who think we can somehow get an alternative energy Manhatten project up and running are coming from.
wombatas: Exactly. Anyone who is good with physics knows that mass is not even the interesting variable in the energy equation, which would be velocity. I wanted to mention this earlier, but thought it more helpful just to point out the error in this “math guy’s” reasoning rather than confuse things with a different (but simpler) argument.
You gotta love Jayson Blair’s anonymous sources… 🙂
kidding, kidding…
