ROSARIO: We talk about aerodynamics
being the understanding of how air interacts
with an object that is moving through the air
or the air moving through the object.
Sports like soccer, baseball,
what you have is a ball that is moving through the air,
and there are forces and resistance
that are acting in that object as it is moving.
So, aerodynamics is what causes a ball to spin around
when it is pitched by a pitcher, to generate the curve,
to go faster or slower.
So aerodynamics is at the heart of sports
and how the balls behave as they are moving.
So, let's take, for example, the World Cup soccer
and all the conversations that was happening
about how the ball was behaving or misbehaving.
There were many factors that created differences
in the ball as it behaved.
Two factors of aerodynamics in sport
will be altitude and temperature.
Both of them have impact on how a ball will behave
when it is traveling through air.
Altitude influences the density of the air.
And density of the air is what creates resistance
when a ball is moving through.
So the World Cup was played at different altitudes.
There were different fields at different altitudes.
I suspect that that has a significant impact
in some of the long balls that we saw
when somebody kick and the balls kept going long.
The athletes were not properly calibrating their forces
as the ball was traveling.
Another factor is the temperature.
We have to remember that it was played
during the winter season in South Africa.
There was higher temperatures, once again, creating,
perhaps, significant different conditions
that the athletes weren't practicing on.
So, all that plays a factor on how the balls behave.
