Newly Published Telstar 18 Research

My paper on this year's World Cup ball, the Telstar 18, finally went live this past Saturday.  The Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology has graciously allowed the paper to be open access at least until the start of the World Cup.  Click here to download the paper.  My colleagues and coauthors at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, Sungchan Hong and Takeshi Asai, created a short video (48 s) of the Telstar 18 in their wind tunnel.  I put it on my YouTube channel.

As a physicist, I love seeing all the clever ways we humans have devised to study our world.  Wind tunnels are marvelous machines that allow us to determine aerodynamic properties of numerous items, including soccer balls.  Check out our paper and see how I take my colleagues' wind-tunnel data and use it to predict trajectories of Telstar 18 in flight.  We compared Telstar 18 to Brazuca, which was used in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.  Check out how Telstar 18 will fly in Russia.  Just 24 more days until the start of the World Cup!