Paper Football Physics: Engineering Safer Designs for the Field
A football player using his velocity to evade an opposing player, showing how science and sports can intersect.Copyright https://hortonbarbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Speed-Drills-for-Football-Players.png
Students combine the exciting worlds of sports and engineering in this interactive challenge. By learning and utilizing the engineering design process (EDP), students create and design three different shaped footballs to see which one travels the farthest and fastest. The students also calculate the velocity and acceleration, noting how different shapes affect the trajectory of an object. All of this will be done in the pursuit of the perfect football, one that will allow football players to avoid as many concussions as possible.
The goal of designing a football that can reduce concussions ties into materials science and biomechanics. Engineers in these fields work to design safer sports equipment, using data on force, impact, and material behavior to create solutions that minimize risk of injury.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Describe and perform the steps of the engineering design process.
- Calculate velocity from collected data.
- Explain how different shapes can affect an object’s speed/trajectory.
- Describe how to develop and solve various problems using the engineering design process.