Thursday, December 5, 2019

A Dunk That Defies The Laws of Physics?

There has been a lot of conversation about the James Harden dunk
James Harden is an NBA basketball player on the Houston Rockets.
On Tuesday night, the Houston Rockets were playing the San Antonio Spurs,
when James Harden stole the ball and on a breakaway, dunked the ball into the net.
However, contrary to what we would expect, the ball goes through the net
and the force of gravity is exerted on the ball to bring the ball crashing to the ground,
the ball is thrown back into the air by the net.


In order for a person to successfully dunk a ball, the ball must go over the top of the hoop
and pass through the rim. It cannot bounce off the rim.
Because of Newton’s Third Law, the force applied to push the ball through the hoop is equal
and opposite to the force of the ball in his hand. After the ball is released from his hand,
he dunked it with so much force that the net carried the ball back onto the rim.

Because the ball moved so quickly back to the rim, that referees disallowed the basket,
thinking that the basketball did not clear the net. 






Many journalists and commentators have said that the movement of the basketball
through the net and back to the top of the rim, violates the laws of physics.
I have no idea what happened, but using my physics knowledge,
I’ve been thinking about how that could happen.
So, for every force there is an equal and opposite force,
is it possible that the force of the net on the ball is equal and opposite
to the force of the ball on the net. Because of the force of tension in the net,
the net absorbs the impact and slows the ball down as the torque of the force f
rom the net on the ball causes the ball to rotate as it goes back over the rim.
Gravity is acting on the basketball, but somehow the force from the net acting on the ball,
is greater than or equal to the force of gravity. 


Because Tuesday night's game came down to the wire, going into two overtimes,
there has been a lot of uproar around the NBA about the call possibly costing
the Houston Rockets the game. The Houston Rockets will likely file a protest
to count the two points from the dunk that was scored in regulation,
to give the Rockets the win, or ask to replay the last 7 minutes and 50 seconds of the game.


How 'bout them physics?


No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.