SHANE STAY
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About the Author
  • Where to Buy
  • Press

soccer science?

1/7/2015

7 Comments

 
All these teams, Spain, Brazil, Germany, etc., are not just knock-out fighters; they have the complete boxing skill set. The game of soccer, like basketball, is simple in the respect of offense: fast breaks and half court possession. Your first instinct should be to look for the fast break. If this is not on, then turn to the half court possession game. The field in soccer is much bigger than a basketball court, however, according to Glenn Beck, as with climate change, the debate is still raging. The half court possession game can be broken down into sections, but it should be thought of as any place on the field. In half court possession the intent should be to play the ball across the field, going back and forth, connecting with each wing or outside defender positioned near the sideline. (You can pass up and back to accomplish this as well, presenting to the opponent, the idea, that you are going forward.) As you go across the field with possession you are looking for opportunities to create danger in your opponent’s defensive areas. Fairly simple. You have to conquer this first. As you begin to master this, which takes time and patience, the players will naturally begin to “possess with a purpose.” 

   How in the world could complicated science work into this? 
  Everything should connect, as Richard Feynman illustrates from the strange world of quantum physics “…the photons don’t really bounce off the surface of the glass; they interact with the electrons inside the glass. I’ll show you how photons do nothing but go from one electron to another, and how reflection and transmission are really the result of an electron picking up a photon, ‘scratching it’s head,’ so to speak, and emitting a new photon.” QED, Richard Feynman, Princeton University Press, 1985. Emitting a new photon. A photon strikes a surface, such as a mirror, and the reflection is not the same photon. What is Feynman talking about now? Crazy old Feynman. Photon “Albert” strikes the mirror, interacts with electron “Elizabeth” and photon “Billy” is emitted. What? A new photon comes out? We might want to trust Feynman on this one. He was one of the original scientists, along side Robert Oppenheimer, in New Mexico, working on the first atomic bomb – which would eventually be dropped over Japan in World War II, forever changing the course of history. Aside from the questionable morality of creating such a weapon, I think he knew what he was talking about. Lasers being bounced off of mirrors are actually photons hitting the mirror, doing something with an electron, thus, sending out a new photon, in light time. It wasn’t what we thought: just light bouncing off of something. Boom, light hit. Light go forward. It’s chemistry based. Both in the form of traditional chemistry, as in molecules interacting, and also chemistry in sports terms as well. People stop and talk, they may have a moment, they may have a laugh – what? They laughed? Some people don’t laugh. They don’t have a moment. But they’re interacting, nonetheless. In sports terms, we have to find the right interaction between players. It’s not just, “Boom-boom, go forward.” It’s not cut and dry. There’s got to be something going on there.
   What in the world are buckyballs? Stephen Hawking explains, “In 1999 a team of physicists in Austria fired a series of soccer-ball-shaped molecules toward a barrier. Those molecules, each made of sixty carbon atoms, are sometimes called buckyballs because the architect Buckminster Fuller built buildings of that shape. Fuller’s geodesic domes were probably the largest soccer-ball-shaped objects in existence. The buckyballs were the smallest. The barrier toward which the scientists took their aim had, in effect, two slits through which the buckyballs could pass. Beyond the wall, the physicists situated the equivalent of a screen to detect and count the emergent molecules. (Buckyballs are like microscopic soccer balls made of carbon atoms.)."
   Hawking goes on to illustrate that if you put “three walls” with gaps in-between, thus, making “two slits” or “two gaps” in the walls, in front of a real soccer goal and kick real soccer balls through the gaps in the walls, the balls will land together, in the back of the net, in the same area. If you do the same experiment using buckyballs, using slits in a metal wall, with a “net” – so to speak – for the microscopic travelers to land in on the other side, you’ll find that the buckyballs will not always land in the predictable places that the real life soccer balls would.
   There are complicated theories as to why the buckyballs form interference patterns as they are shot through gaps in a wall. “According to the quantum model, however, the particle is said to have no definite position during the time it is between the starting point and the endpoint. Feynman realized one does not have to interpret that to mean that particles take no path as they travel between source and screen. It could mean instead that particles take every possible path connecting those points. This, Feynman asserted, is what makes quantum physics different from Newtonian physics. The situation at both slits matters because, rather than following a single defined path, particles take every path, and they take them all simultaneously! That sounds like science fiction, but it isn’t. Feynman formulated a mathematical expression – the Feynman sum over histories – that reflects this idea and reproduces all the laws of quantum physics.” Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design.
   Furthermore, if one slit is open, a certain amount of buckyballs will land at the other end. If two slits are open, the predicted amount of buckyballs, according to reason, will not land there. “It seems as if, somewhere on their journey from source to screen, the particles acquire information about both slits. That kind of behavior is drastically different from the way things seem to behave in everyday life, in which a ball would follow a path through one of the slits and be unaffected by the situation at the other,” Stephen Hawking. By way of the observation from people the results vary as well!
   People are complicated. “The quantum model of nature encompasses principles that contradict not only our everyday experience but our intuitive concept of reality,” Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design. I would argue the macro model and approach of American soccer contradicts not only our everyday experience but our intuitive concept of reality.
   People make decisions, just like it is assumed the buckyballs might be doing by Feynman and others, suggesting that they were taking every possible path to the “net” area. What? Every possible path, you mean in the universe? Apparently. Very peculiar behavior. And that path may also be disturbed by the observation from people. Humans, in a soccer game, have many choices to make. Fans are watching the game, thus, if we can extrapolate from the findings of Feynman, Hawking and others studying the world of quantum physics, they – the fans – are influencing the choices the players make, whether they yell or not. It seems to be in sports, that these influences originate from the belief system from each culture. (Brazil desires a creative, dancing, flow in their style; whereas England can be very direct and to the point with piercing crosses.) How can we get them – the players – to make the right choice? What is the right choice? So far, after twenty years of mediocre results – at best – I would suggest the right choices haven’t been made. American teams – along with the fans and culture wrapped up with it – keep going through one slit, with the same result; thinking only one way. Other teams, with great success, have players, it would seem, that think of every possible way to do things. Or maybe they’re just plain better?
   Just pushing forward for the sake of getting forward is out-of-bounds-wrong and it defeats the purpose of going forward in the first place. It rushes everything. It takes the game out of playing the game. The whole point of stepping on the field is to possess the ball and score, in the simplest terms. There are so many other things, obviously, but possessing the ball is something we as Americans are lacking. We lack in possession like the 85’ SNL cast lacked a good…plan.
7 Comments
Amy
1/7/2015 02:34:15 am

I think it could work!

Reply
Ellen
1/8/2015 12:07:12 am

:)

Reply
Bob
1/10/2015 11:25:39 am

Great

Reply
Greg
1/20/2015 07:56:08 am

Nice

Reply
Jane
1/30/2015 04:50:51 am

!

Reply
Michael E.
3/9/2015 06:57:24 am

There is no doubt...

Reply
Allan
7/16/2015 04:51:33 am

...

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Shane stay +   
    ​(archives)     

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014

    KEY
    (NS) refers to "Non-Soccer" related blog entries, stories and essays.

    Author

    Shane Stay, author of The Euro 2020, The World Cup 2018 Book, Why American Soccer Isn't There Yet.

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    All Written Work Copyright 2014-2023 Shane Stay

Proudly powered by Weebly