When San Luis Obispo High School students think about football they don’t usually think of science. In football, there is a lot more math and science that goes into it without even realizing it. “If you are trying to catch up to a runner you have to run in a diagonal line to be able to intercept the runner,” said football player freshman Gage Walber.  What Walber is referring to is the Pythagorean Theorem. For example there is a ball carrier and the end zone is 40 meters away and the defender is thirty meters from the ball carrier that can make a triangle and so you can figure out how far the defender needs to run by using the Pythagorean theorem. Stating that A2+B2=C2. So to figure how far the runner has to run you can do 402+302=C2. So the hypotenuse is 50 meters, which is how far the defender needs to run to catch up with the runner.

  The shape of a football is very interesting. There’s almost no sports ball that has the same shape. All others use spheres because no matter where you hit it you will get the same vector, or… The shape of a football is prolate spheroid. The reason for using this shape is because it does so well at flying through the air. Also the reason it go through the air so well is because it reduces drag. The spinning motion of the football reduces drag because it breaks up the bounty of stationary air and the football. So remember next time you are playing a sport there is science happening that you might not realize.