WEBVTT - Do Footballs Fly Farther in Denver? 0:00:02.000 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:10.800 Lauren Bogelbam Here. Imagine a fine afternoon in Denver, the 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:15.000 Mile High City. Behind quarterback Peyton Manning's explosive offensive, the 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:17.080 Denver Broncos of a mast to tend to two record. 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:20.439 Today they're hosting the Tennessee Titans, a squad that's lost 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.480 three of its past four games. The Titans have put 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:25.759 up a good fight over the first half hour of gameplay. 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:30.400 Three seconds before halftime, the score is Tennessee Denver seventeen. 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:34.680 Enter Broncos kicker Matt Prator trotting out to the Denver 0:00:34.760 --> 0:00:37.240 forty six yard line. He readies himself for the play 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:40.000 of his life. A mighty kick sends the ball soaring 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:42.400 end over end across the field. As a nervous crowd 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:46.120 holds its breadth, and then the place erupts with ease. 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.640 The ball sails through the yellow cross bar in Tennessee's 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:52.159 end zone. It's the longest completed field goal in NFL history, 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:55.640 a perfectly made sixty four yard drill for a metric friends, 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:59.560 that's about fifty eight meters. Perhaps emboldened by prators heroics, 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:01.640 the Bronchs go on to crush the Titans of the 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:05.600 second half, thus clinching a playoff berth. The game I 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:10.040 just described took place on December eight Today, prater sixty 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:12.520 four yard or still holds the all time distance record, 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.200 although his accomplishment has never been bested. Jaw Dropping football 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:19.520 kicks are nothing new in the Rocky Mountains. Three of 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:21.959 the five longest field goals that the NFL has ever 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:26.360 seen were made in Denver's mile high Stadium. Bronco's great 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:28.840 Jason Elam nailed a sixty three yard or there in 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:32.480 a feat that was matched by Sebastian Janikowski when his 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:35.720 Oakland Raiders came to town thirteen years later. But to 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:38.320 hear some sports fans tell it, those three kicks should 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:42.200 have asterix attached. The official elevation of Colorado's capital is 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.240 exactly one mile that's one thousand, six hundred and nine 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:49.120 meters above sea level. No other NFL city sits anywhere 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:52.120 close to that altitude. Of The runner up is Glendale, Arizona, 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:54.800 which is just one thousand feet or three hundred meters 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:58.960 above sea level. Denver's elevation does affect the sporting events 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:01.760 up there. When a football is kicked as Broncos home game, 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:03.800 it's apt to cover more distance than it would in 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.559 lower elevations. And this doesn't just affect three point field goals. 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.880 Kickoffs tend to go farther as well. There's a book 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:13.320 called Football Physics, The Science of the Game, by one 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:17.120 University of Nebraska professor Timothy Gay. For it, he ran 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.519 the numbers on eight different teams from cities that sit 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:22.440 more or less at sea level, like the Miami Dolphins 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:24.840 and the New England Patriots, that played at least one 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:27.320 road game in Denver during the two thousand one or 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.680 two thousand two seasons. He found that in those two years, 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:34.360 the visiting kickers from low elevation towns enjoyed some great numbers. 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:37.560 When they went to Denver. Up in Colorado, their kickoffs 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:41.000 traveled seventy point one yards that's sixty four meters on average. 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:44.400 Back in their respective home fields, the average kickoff distance 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.560 dropped by seven point three yards that's six point six meters. 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:52.760 To understand those numbers, will need to talk about air density. Pretend, 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.079 as I'm sure you want to, that you have a 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:57.520 jet back if you were to take off at sea 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:00.959 level and travel through Earth's atmosphere in a straight line up, 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:03.360 The density of the air around you would get lower 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:07.080 as your altitude increased. This is due to a universal law. 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:10.680 As the distance between two objects grows, the gravitational pull 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:14.160 that they exert on each other. Lessons and air molecules 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:17.000 are not exempt. The poll of Earth's gravity is more 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:20.000 strongly felt by molecules that are closer to the planet's 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:24.040 center at or below sea level. Gravitational attraction packs the 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:27.200 molecules tightly together, and the weight of the molecules sitting 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:29.440 higher up in the atmosphere really bears down on the 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:33.560 ones occupying low elevations. In consequence, the air itself grows 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.240 denser the closer you get to the surface. Way up 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:39.320 in the mile high city, the air is only about 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:42.000 eighty two percent as dense as it is at sea level. 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:45.440 A bald kicked skyward in Denver will therefore encounter fewer 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:48.760 air molecules than it would in Miami. That's important to 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.920 note because air molecules create drag. Drag is a force 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:55.680 that pushes against solid bodies as they travel through fluids 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.920 or gases. A punted or kicked football will run headlong 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.320 into a steady barrage of air molecules. Their combined drag 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:06.280 will slow it down, sometimes dramatically. But remember, in low 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:10.760 density air molecules are fewer and farther between. Therefore, footballs 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:15.240 can and often do, encounter less drag in Denver. Denver's 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:18.359 altitude impacts baseball as well. A physicist and Red Sox 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.640 fan Alan Nathan reports that flyballs at Coors Field go 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:24.440 approximately five percent farther than they do at Fenway Park 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:29.080 in Boston. Yet kicking on the Broncos home turf won't 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:33.159 guarantee success for kickers or punters. Altitude reduces air density 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.800 and by extension, drag, but cold weather increases it, and 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:41.919 boy can Colorado get chili. Survey of NFL statistical records 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:44.440 found that in outdoor games played at temperatures of thirty 0:04:44.520 --> 0:04:47.840 nine degrees faheit that's four degrees celsius or lower, field 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:51.039 goal accuracy drops by one point seven percent, while the 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.599 average punt length is about one yard shorter than normal. 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.240 These findings hold true throughout the league, so it's to 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.480 Matt Prador's credit that his record breaking field goal split 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:03.360 the uprights from sixty four yards out, even though Denver's 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.400 temperature had fallen to just fourteen degrees fahrenheit. That's negative 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:10.599 ten celsius at the time. Whatever the weather, kicking specialists 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:14.080 need to be on guard against complacency. Denver's reputation as 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:16.800 the mecca of ultra long field goals is well established 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.159 across the league. According to players, that mile high mystique 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:24.000 can trick visiting kickers into overestimating their abilities. We could 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.880 say that, when in doubt, always air on the side 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:34.560 of caution. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.000 produced by Tyler Clang for I Heart Media and How 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:39.040 Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.599 kick in topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:53.320 dot com.