Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Breaking news: soccer balls no longer polyhedral !

The soccer ball provides a great example of Euler's formula (I'm told it's also fun to kick it around and stuff). It consists of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons, and a standard question one can ask is: why can't we tile the whole surface with hexagons ? This shape is also called the Buckyball, and is a special case of a carbon allotrope called a fullerene.

Apparently, the soccer balls being used at the World Cup are no longer polyhedral. They consist of 14 pieces, many of which look a lot like the squashed oval shape you see on tennis balls and baseballs. This makes the ball rounder and faster, and apparently gives it baseball-like effects when moving through the air. Players (and especially goalkeepers) have been complaining about this, but then they complain every World Cup, so....


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4 comments:

  1. Have you seen this article ? (Unfortunately, it is only available to subscribers but it may be in your library.)

    Posted by Anonymous

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  2. AKA truncated icosahedron.

    You probably meant to give the link for the balls used for -this- years cup:

    http://soccerballworld.com/Teamgeist.htm

     

    Posted by anonymous

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  3. There is a description in the math trek column of sciencenews (week of July 10, 2006).
    http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060708/mathtrek.asp
     

    Posted by Moorthy

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  4. The majority of the brazilian players have complained about the new ball. Most of their training was spent to learn kicking the new ball... 

    Posted by Soccer balls

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