Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbomb here with a classic episode for all you
Speaker 1: fall football fanatics, with a crossover into the physics of
Speaker 1: field goalflight. In this one, we're talking about how the
Speaker 1: high altitude of certain NFL stadiums can actually make a
Speaker 1: difference and how far a ball will go. Hey Brainstuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbaumb 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 have a massed to ten 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 twenty one,
Speaker 1: Denver seventeen. Enter Broncos kicker Matt Prater trotting out to
Speaker 1: the Denver forty six yard line. He readies himself for
Speaker 1: the play of his life. A mighty kick sends the
Speaker 1: ball soaring and end across the field as a nervous
Speaker 1: crowd holds its breadth and then the place erupts with ease,
Speaker 1: the ball sales 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 a ferrometric friends
Speaker 1: that's about fifty eight meters. Perhaps emboldened by Prayder's heroics,
Speaker 1: the Broncos 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 eighth, twenty thirteen. Today,
Speaker 1: Prayder's sixty four yarders 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 yarder there in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, a feat that was matched by Sebastian Jankowski
Speaker 1: when his Oakland Raiders came to town thirteen years later.
Speaker 1: But to hear some sports fans tell it, those three
Speaker 1: kicks should have asterisks attached. 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. 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 at Bronco's 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 and one
Speaker 1: or two thousand and two seasons. He found that in
Speaker 1: those two years, the visiting kickers from low elevation towns
Speaker 1: enjoyed some great numbers when they went to Denver up
Speaker 1: in Colorado. Their kickoffs traveled seventy point one yards that's
Speaker 1: sixty four meters on average. Back in their respective home fields,
Speaker 1: the average kickoff distance dropped by seven point three yards
Speaker 1: that's six point six meters. To understand those numbers, we'll
Speaker 1: need to talk about air density. Pretend, as I'm sure
Speaker 1: you want to, that you have a jet pack. If
Speaker 1: you were to take off at sea level and travel
Speaker 1: through Earth's atmosphere in a straight line up, the density
Speaker 1: of the air around you would get lower as your
Speaker 1: altitude increased. This is due to a universal law. As
Speaker 1: the distance between two objects grows, the gravitational pull that
Speaker 1: they exert on each other lessens, and air molecules are
Speaker 1: not exempt. The pull of Earth's gravity is more strongly
Speaker 1: felt by molecules that are closer to the planet's center
Speaker 1: at or below sea level. Gravitational attraction packs the molecules
Speaker 1: tightly together, and the weight of the molecules sitting higher
Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere really bears down on the ones
Speaker 1: occupying low elevations. In consequence, the air itself grows denser
Speaker 1: the closer you get to the surface. Way up in
Speaker 1: the mile high city, the air's only about eighty two
Speaker 1: percent as dense as it is at sea level. A
Speaker 1: ball kicked skyward in Denver will therefore encounter fewer air
Speaker 1: molecules than it would in Miami. That's important to note
Speaker 1: because air molecules create drag. Drag is a force that
Speaker 1: pushes against solid bodies as they travel through fluids or gases.
Speaker 1: A punted or kicked football will run headlong into a
Speaker 1: steady barrage of air molecules. Their combined drag will slow
Speaker 1: it down, sometimes dramatically. But remember, in low density air
Speaker 1: molecules are fewer and farther between. Therefore, footballs can and
Speaker 1: often do, encounter less drag in Denver. Denver's altitude impacts
Speaker 1: baseball as well. A physicist and Red Sox fan Alan
Speaker 1: Nathan reports that flyballs at cors Field go approximately five
Speaker 1: percent farther than they do at Fenway Park in Boston.
Speaker 1: Yet kicking on the Broncos home turf won't guarantee success
Speaker 1: for kickers or punters. Altitude reduces air density and by extension, drag,
Speaker 1: but cold weather increases it, and boy, can Colorado get chili.
Speaker 1: A twenty eleven survey of NFL statistical records found that
Speaker 1: in outdoor games played at temperatures of thirty nine degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit that's four degrees celsius or lower. Field goal accuracy
Speaker 1: drops by one point seven percent, while the average punt
Speaker 1: length is about one yard shorter than normal. These findings
Speaker 1: hold true throughout the league. So it's to Matt Prater's
Speaker 1: credit that his record breaking field goals split the uprights
Speaker 1: from sixty four yards out even though Denver's temperature had
Speaker 1: fallen to just fourteen degrees fahrenheit that's negative ten celsius
Speaker 1: at the time. Whatever the weather, kicking specialists need to
Speaker 1: be on guard against complacency. Denver's reputation as the mecca
Speaker 1: of ultra long field goals is well established across the league.
Speaker 1: According to players, that mile high mystique can trick visiting
Speaker 1: kickers into overestimating their abilities. We could say that when
Speaker 1: in doubt, always air on the side of caution. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article Physics and Football, How
Speaker 1: Denver's altitude affects field goals on HowStuffWorks dot Com. Written
Speaker 1: I'm Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in
Speaker 1: partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang,
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