Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Bogelbam Here. Imagine a fine afternoon in Denver, the
Speaker 1: Mile High City. Behind quarterback Peyton Manning's explosive offensive, the
Speaker 1: Denver Broncos of a mast to tend to two record.
Speaker 1: Today they're hosting the Tennessee Titans, a squad that's lost
Speaker 1: three of its past four games. The Titans have put
Speaker 1: up a good fight over the first half hour of gameplay.
Speaker 1: Three seconds before halftime, the score is Tennessee Denver seventeen.
Speaker 1: Enter Broncos kicker Matt Prator trotting out to the Denver
Speaker 1: forty six yard line. He readies himself for the play
Speaker 1: of his life. A mighty kick sends the ball soaring
Speaker 1: end over end across the field. As a nervous crowd
Speaker 1: holds its breadth, and then the place erupts with ease.
Speaker 1: The ball sails through the yellow cross bar in Tennessee's
Speaker 1: end zone. It's the longest completed field goal in NFL history,
Speaker 1: a perfectly made sixty four yard drill for a metric friends,
Speaker 1: that's about fifty eight meters. Perhaps emboldened by prators heroics,
Speaker 1: the Bronchs go on to crush the Titans of the
Speaker 1: second half, thus clinching a playoff berth. The game I
Speaker 1: just described took place on December eight Today, prater sixty
Speaker 1: four yard or still holds the all time distance record,
Speaker 1: although his accomplishment has never been bested. Jaw Dropping football
Speaker 1: kicks are nothing new in the Rocky Mountains. Three of
Speaker 1: the five longest field goals that the NFL has ever
Speaker 1: seen were made in Denver's mile high Stadium. Bronco's great
Speaker 1: Jason Elam nailed a sixty three yard or there in
Speaker 1: a feat that was matched by Sebastian Janikowski when his
Speaker 1: Oakland Raiders came to town thirteen years later. But to
Speaker 1: hear some sports fans tell it, those three kicks should
Speaker 1: have asterix attached. The official elevation of Colorado's capital is
Speaker 1: exactly one mile that's one thousand, six hundred and nine
Speaker 1: meters above sea level. No other NFL city sits anywhere
Speaker 1: close to that altitude. Of The runner up is Glendale, Arizona,
Speaker 1: which is just one thousand feet or three hundred meters
Speaker 1: above sea level. Denver's elevation does affect the sporting events
Speaker 1: up there. When a football is kicked as Broncos home game,
Speaker 1: it's apt to cover more distance than it would in
Speaker 1: lower elevations. And this doesn't just affect three point field goals.
Speaker 1: Kickoffs tend to go farther as well. There's a book
Speaker 1: called Football Physics, The Science of the Game, by one
Speaker 1: University of Nebraska professor Timothy Gay. For it, he ran
Speaker 1: the numbers on eight different teams from cities that sit
Speaker 1: more or less at sea level, like the Miami Dolphins
Speaker 1: and the New England Patriots, that played at least one
Speaker 1: road game in Denver during the two thousand one or
Speaker 1: two thousand two seasons. He found that in those two years,
Speaker 1: the visiting kickers from low elevation towns enjoyed some great numbers.
Speaker 1: When they went to Denver. Up in Colorado, their kickoffs
Speaker 1: traveled seventy point one yards that's sixty four meters on average.
Speaker 1: Back in their respective home fields, the average kickoff distance
Speaker 1: dropped by seven point three yards that's six point six meters.
Speaker 1: To understand those numbers, will need to talk about air density. Pretend,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you want to, that you have a
Speaker 1: jet back if you were to take off at sea
Speaker 1: level and travel through Earth's atmosphere in a straight line up,
Speaker 1: The density of the air around you would get lower
Speaker 1: as your altitude increased. This is due to a universal law.
Speaker 1: As the distance between two objects grows, the gravitational pull
Speaker 1: that they exert on each other. Lessons and air molecules
Speaker 1: are not exempt. The poll of Earth's gravity is more
Speaker 1: strongly felt by molecules that are closer to the planet's
Speaker 1: center at or below sea level. Gravitational attraction packs the
Speaker 1: molecules tightly together, and the weight of the molecules sitting
Speaker 1: higher up in the atmosphere really bears down on the
Speaker 1: ones occupying low elevations. In consequence, the air itself grows
Speaker 1: denser the closer you get to the surface. Way up
Speaker 1: in the mile high city, the air is only about
Speaker 1: eighty two percent as dense as it is at sea level.
Speaker 1: A bald kicked skyward in Denver will therefore encounter fewer
Speaker 1: air molecules than it would in Miami. That's important to
Speaker 1: note because air molecules create drag. Drag is a force
Speaker 1: that pushes against solid bodies as they travel through fluids
Speaker 1: or gases. A punted or kicked football will run headlong
Speaker 1: into a steady barrage of air molecules. Their combined drag
Speaker 1: will slow it down, sometimes dramatically. But remember, in low
Speaker 1: density air molecules are fewer and farther between. Therefore, footballs
Speaker 1: can and often do, encounter less drag in Denver. Denver's
Speaker 1: altitude impacts baseball as well. A physicist and Red Sox
Speaker 1: fan Alan Nathan reports that flyballs at Coors Field go
Speaker 1: approximately five percent farther than they do at Fenway Park
Speaker 1: in Boston. Yet kicking on the Broncos home turf won't
Speaker 1: guarantee success for kickers or punters. Altitude reduces air density
Speaker 1: and by extension, drag, but cold weather increases it, and
Speaker 1: boy can Colorado get chili. Survey of NFL statistical records
Speaker 1: found that in outdoor games played at temperatures of thirty
Speaker 1: nine degrees faheit that's four degrees celsius or lower, field
Speaker 1: goal accuracy drops by one point seven percent, while the
Speaker 1: average punt length is about one yard shorter than normal.
Speaker 1: These findings hold true throughout the league, so it's to
Speaker 1: Matt Prador's credit that his record breaking field goal split
Speaker 1: the uprights from sixty four yards out, even though Denver's
Speaker 1: temperature had fallen to just fourteen degrees fahrenheit. That's negative
Speaker 1: ten celsius at the time. Whatever the weather, kicking specialists
Speaker 1: need to be on guard against complacency. Denver's reputation as
Speaker 1: the mecca of ultra long field goals is well established
Speaker 1: across the league. According to players, that mile high mystique
Speaker 1: can trick visiting kickers into overestimating their abilities. We could
Speaker 1: say that, when in doubt, always air on the side
Speaker 1: of caution. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang for I Heart Media and How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: kick in topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com.