The competition on youtube. I bet we can destroy this contest. 

posted by natedogg at 03:55PM CST on January 14

I know you guys can kick ass, which is why I posted it. I want my friends to be the proud owners of the nanotrophy!!!! y'all might have to buy me a beer with your winnings though.....  

posted by beckto at 04:07PM CST on January 14

Hm, if I could get a few decades of game-by-game football data at the box score level I could extend the baseball-weather thing and find out something new... I don't know whether an infographic-powered vid would do well or poorly tho.

Also: I am disappointed this has nothing to do with Bowling. 

posted by mrflip at 04:37PM CST on January 14

So: here would be an idea. Take football box scores &c from online sources, and combine with other rich data sources. Make a quick-cutting video running down things physics tells you about the world, the impact you would expect on a football game, and infographics showing the extent to which it's borne out.

So stuff like:

[Francis the mule kicking a field goal] The longer the field goal,
[Shot of wide left or Norwood] the lower the success rate
[view through a gunsight] Part of the reason is accuracy --
[drawing of angles, maybe using a high-res overhead shot] as you get farther the angle covered by the goalposts gets smaller
[shot of a cannonball] you also of course have to deliver more energy to the ball so it will go farther
[kick falling short] but there's an upper limit on what your legs can do. For a longer kick,
[drawing of flat and peaked parabolas] physics tells us that you have to make the kick shallower
[blocked kick] which means that it's easier for a defender to block.
[graph of (success, blocks, misses) vs. distance of field goals] Diving into the numbers, (tell what that shows)

[nfl guys bloviating] Anyone will tell you that as the weather gets colder throwing a football gets harder. Duh.
[clip of rubber mushing] Part of the reason: as the weather gets colder the football gets harder.
[cool rubber, not mushy] (two sentences on why)
[graph showing pass completion %, passing yards, total score, interception rate vs. temperature for outdoor games]

Basically, something like this baseball video (directorial technique may be familiar to BNAT attendees): take ~three interesting fairly simple things physics could tell you about football + the outcome of a data-mining experiment to test it. 

posted by mrflip at 05:15PM CST on January 14

[shot of tom brady 'tuck rule' play]. But, sometimes, even the best laid plans come down to the quirkiest things [shot of Statue of Liberty play, preferably the clip where Bugs bunny turns into the statue of liberty] 

posted by Valatan at 07:39PM CST on January 14

Scene:
A guy and a girl are in a field. They explain that the trajectory of a kicked football is parabolic (like many other things in flight). They propose to kick a football to show this behavior in action. The guy runs at the football and the girl yanks it away at the last second. A straw dummy stand-in of the guy flies through the air parabolically. Graphics describe the details of his flight.

There's more there but that's a thumbnail. 

posted by natedogg at 06:00PM CST on January 16

You should use the part where the guy flies through the air to discuss torque.  

posted by beckto at 01:00PM CST on January 17