Hard Hits

How much force is in a car crash? How much energy is behind a punch? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice investigate hard hits from boxing, football, rugby, soccer, NASCAR, and more.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. And in this installment, we're gonna focus on the physics of hard hits. In contact sports, in bats and sticks and balls and crashes on the racetrack. And I've got with me as always, Chuck. Nice, Chuck. Hey, what's happening? All right, Chuck, a professional stand-up comedian, but also sports enthusiast. But that's still not good enough to have an astrophysicist and a sports enthusiast comic. We need an actual athlete. And for that, we have Gary O'Reilly. Gary?

• 0:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey Neil, hey Chuck.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a former athlete.

• 0:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, past tense.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Past tense.

• 0:56Gary O'Reilly?

  But a current sports fan. I'm a current sports fan.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  Isn't being an athlete like being the president? Once you're a pro athlete, you're always an athlete for the rest of your life.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Yeah, okay.

• 1:10Gary O'Reilly?

  I get a feeling the sand is definitely going to the bottom of the glass right now.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Gary, a professional soccer player in your day, we're delighted to have you. And you're over from the UK, so that accounts for your bit of an accent there.

• 1:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, just a touch.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But of course to-

• 1:28Chuck Nice?

  And having more class.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, which is completely benchmarked by Masterpiece Theater, most of us growing up. That was, you know, the British accent that we heard. Alistair Cook.

• 1:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes. Oh, Alistair Cook's a national treasure. He's a bit like Sir David Attenborough.

• 1:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:48Chuck Nice?

  Who is the other Brit that every single American knows from growing up, you know?

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what I'm saying. I finally learned that you guys have bad-talking people too the first time I heard The Beatles speak. Ah.

• 2:01Gary O'Reilly?

  What's wrong with you, Neil?

• 2:04Gary O'Reilly?

  What's wrong? Do you think I don't like your accents? What's your problem? You didn't go to Birmingham and find out people talk like this and you won't get on top?

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sing me a song, don't talk to me.

• 2:18Gary O'Reilly?

  We're a quaint little island with weird dialects. For such a small little place, we have the most ridiculous amount of dialects.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so a segment one, let's call this body check. Now, no, we didn't bring in, other than you, Gary, we didn't bring in fully pummeled athletes to comment on what it feels like to be the victim of the physics of a crash or a hit or an encounter. So it's just me in this episode tapping my physics background. I have a degree in physics to explore this. I'll do my best. But do we have three segments worth if it's just me talking?

• 2:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, if you think about it, if Biden and Trump can make an 11-minute conversation last 90 minutes, we can do this. We got three sections and then some. Yep, there you go.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So let's try this. So let's talk about boxing.

• 3:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And there's all this talk about what effect a different kind of punch would have on the person who gets hit, all right? And is it a hit to the head or to the midsection? Or to the, is it an uppercut? Is it a jab? You know, so there's a, there's a whole sort of range of ways to think about that. And I can tell you, there's one thing that matters most in all of this. And that's how fast is your hand moving? That, period. That's it. How fast is your hand moving? And I can tell you a couple of things. You know, you ever see the barroom fights in movies in the, in the Old West?

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where a person sort of reaches back and then they send their fist forward and they make,

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and they make contact. Right at the extension of their arm.

• 4:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ever notice that?

• 4:16Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that is the least effective punch you could possibly land. Alright, so if you take strobe photos of your hand moving forward, and when you try to punch as fast as you can, and when you do that, what you want is to hit someone, and I hate even speaking this way because it's about violence, but let me just explain the physics of it. So, take us equal strobe images of your fist going forward. Find the spot where your hand moved the most between strobe images. That's when your hand is moving the fastest. And that is never at the end of your punch, because your hand is slowing down there, otherwise it would detach and keep going. It has to slow down because it eventually hits zero.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, your hand is moving at its fastest somewhere in the middle of that punch. So, all of the barroom things where they hit at the outer limits, they're not being affected. That's why the guy gets up and keeps fighting.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. That's why he has to pick up a whiskey bottle and then hit him over the head with it.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 5:21Chuck Nice?

  Because his punches are ineffective.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Chuck.

• 5:24Gary O'Reilly?

  This goes back to a couple of things.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Bruce Lee, when he stands directly in front of somebody and just punches them. You remember that bit, Chuck?

• 5:32Chuck Nice?

  That's called the, uh, the two-inch punch.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and I call it theater, but...

• 5:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh!

• 5:42Gary O'Reilly?

  And the other thing is...

• 5:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, you are not telling me that Bruce Lee is scamming me.

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's dead, so, you know, I feel pretty safe. I'm saying about Mike Tyson, because he's alive. Come find your ass, right?

• 5:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, that's right. I mean, the thing is...

• 5:56Chuck Nice?

  I will eat your children.

• 5:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 6:01Chuck Nice?

  Chuck, I'm serious. That's a direct quote from Mike...

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mike Tyson, go to Chuck.

• 6:06Chuck Nice?

  No, that's a direct quote from Mike Tyson. No, let me tell you something, okay? I will eat your children, okay? That's what I will do, alright? I will put some salt on them and I will have...

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't believe that.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  He said that. He said, "I will eat your children."

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to believe it, okay?

• 6:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Alright, so the idea, Neil, is to punch a point beyond the person.

• 6:31Gary O'Reilly?

  That way, you're traveling, you're still traveling through their head.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if you don't, if you're not comfortable with physics or don't know physics, that's the, that's the, I don't know physics way to say exactly what I just said. Right? So if you punch aiming for a spot behind the person, and then drive through. Your hand will hit the person with, at your maximum speed. Because your maximum speed is not at the end, it's in the middle. Okay, so fighters who are experienced knew that intuitively. And it comes out sounding like it's a deep eastern philosophy, but it's just physics. Okay, you know, punch through to the other side of the person and that will impart the max. Yeah, so that's just, you're hitting them when your hand is moving at its fastest speed. And at its fastest speed, you have the highest kinetic energy.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and kinetic energy is a curious thing, kinetic energy. Because it scales as the velocity squared. Squared, okay, so if you hit three times as fast, your fist is carrying three squared, nine times the energy than if you hit it at one-third that speed. So kinetic energy, that's why a fastball, that's why a hundred mile an hour fastball in baseball has twice the kinetic energy as a seventy mile an hour fastball. It's not just like thirty or forty percent more, it's twice.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's, it's, it's, so it's twice as hard to throw. That's why it's so rare to get a hundred mile an hour fastball.

• 8:09Gary O'Reilly?

  What if I throw in a rotation as, as a punch from down by my waistline? And I come up and rotate through as well as, and I lean through into it, does that?

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here's the thing, if you, if you're moving forward, you get some kinetic energy that way. And you also get momentum. Momentum goes directly with velocity. It's just the mass times the velocity. Okay, kinetic energy is one-half times the mass times the velocity squared. By the way, what's the most famous equation there ever was? E equals mc squared. Notice that c is the speed of light and it's squared. And E is energy. So, energy is familiar in equations with a velocity squared on the other side. Right on down to Einstein's famous equation, equals mc squared. So, what you're trying to do is transfer momentum from your hand to the target. And you want to deposit kinetic energy onto them.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Want to do both of those things. So, if you just, like I said, you're gonna aim behind them because you're gonna hit them with your hand at maximum speed. So, getting back to the Bruce Lee two-inch punch, or whatever that was. From what I've been told is the one-inch punch. I was corrected in my ear by our producer. Oh, okay. The one-inch punch.

• 9:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Bruce spoke to you then.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, if you look carefully, go back to the YouTube videos, okay? And look carefully. He's not just punching from one inch. He is bracing from his rear leg and moving the mass of his entire body forward, rigidly connected to his fist. So it is not the mass of his fist that's hitting the target. It is his entire body connected. Yeah, he'll punch it forward, but watch his hips, his torso, and his hind... hey, hind legs, not a horse.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the legs positioned from the rear. Rewatch that. The thing is, you see the fist and you focus it like a good magician. You focus on the thing that you... watch my hand. No, but all the rest of his body is doing this. So he's really throwing all of his body mass into his fist ostensibly. Correct. So, he's not getting much kinetic energy there, okay? Because he doesn't have room to build up speed. He's getting mostly momentum. And momentum is mass times velocity. So velocity's low. But the mass is not just his fist, it's his whole arm and his body pushing forward. And that's why people recoiled.

• 10:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're getting, you're getting energy transfer just by the moving object. But if you're also twisting, then there's a rotational energy, okay? That fro- from the torque that your fist imparts when it makes contact, if it is turning at the point it makes contact. Okay, so you have an extra bit of energy that you can transmit in that way. So that's all I'm saying.

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  Alright, cool.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now, now, now, if a punch forward as opposed to a punch from below.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can, I, I, I haven't researched this, but I'm betting you can throw a fist faster, just straightforward, than coming from below. But, notice, and I've taken some boxing lessons, um, when you come from below, it's not just this.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 11:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you, your shoulder, the entire mass of your arm, you're bracing off your hips, and all of this goes into that punch. So that's the boxer's version of the one-inch Bruce Lee punch.

• 11:44Chuck Nice?

  It is also the most-

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's why they can be so devastating.

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For that much momentum to the person.

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

  It is the most, so my dad was a Golden Gloves boxer, which is why I do not fight. Um, cause he tried to teach me how to box. He also-

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, you used to be a beautiful, have a beautiful face. What happened?

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your pappy said I was-

• 12:08Chuck Nice?

  He tried to teach me to box and he tried to teach me karate because he was also a karate, a karata man.

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 12:14Chuck Nice?

  Um, and then he decided-

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know karate, but I know-

• 12:19Chuck Nice?

  Uh, wait, wait. I don't know karate, but I know, wait a minute.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh damn, Chuck.

• 12:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, I know that-

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Opportunity for you and not Gary, cause Gary cannot be expected to know this.

• 12:27Chuck Nice?

  No, it's from the movie. Shoot.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's from James Brown.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I don't know. I don't know what that is. I thought it was, I thought it was Eddie Murphy from, uh-

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought you grew up in the hood. Apparently not. Okay.

• 12:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay, well, what is it? James Brown said, "I don't know karate, but I know-"

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I know crazy.

• 12:47Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, crazy works too. We can talk about the kinetic energy of crazy.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  I don't know karate, but I know crazy.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Karazing.

• 12:55Chuck Nice?

  Karate, crazy. Yeah, but anyway, um, yeah, with, uh, after a few lessons, my dad bought me a gun.

• 13:03Chuck Nice?

  But my.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said, forget it. Just take a gun.

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  Here's a gun. Here's a gun, son. However, uh, often we, I spent a lot of time watching boxing as a kid with my dad because him and, um, his favorite punch in the world is an uppercut. It's the most devastating blow in boxing. Uh, because of what you just said, and also it is the knockout punch. Because, uh, the way the transfer of, of energy, uh, force through.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. We didn't even talk about the physiology of what's happening when you get hit. That's a whole other conversation. I was just talking about simple movement of energy and, and momentum, but right. If your head snaps back, you know, that can't be good for your neck.

• 13:45Chuck Nice?

  It is the knockout punch is the.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or your consciousness.

• 13:50Chuck Nice?

  Or your ego.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or your ego. Right, right. So anytime you see a particularly potent punch. And just, again, you tend to focus on just the glove making contact. Look at the positioning of the body that executed the punch. And chances are there's a lot extra momentum brought to the fist. Because it's rigidly connected to the rest of their body. Also, the most devastating punches that I've seen are when your opponent happens to be going forward. And so now.

• 14:23Chuck Nice?

  You're getting an assist.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're getting an assist. It's a punch assist. Okay? Because now the speed that you would otherwise try to need to knock them out, they're helping you out. They're coming at you. And so the relative velocity is higher. If someone is coming to you. So just take a look. Someone moves in. I've seen so many knockout punches in, um, executed simply because the person was unluckily leaning towards a punch that happened to come in.

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so there you have it. But we gotta take a quick break. When we come back, more of sort of, uh, contact sports and the physics of getting hit, the physics of crashes, and the physics of anything that involves contact when we return.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. We're talking about the physics of collisions, of contact, of crashes. And we don't have other guests, other than like me and like my co-hosts, Chuck and Gary. Chuck, Gary?

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  Hey!

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you still there?

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  We are.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so I'm trying to just bring my body of physics knowledge to bear on what I know of these collisions. And so, uh, that's, that's our show. You're stuck with just the three of us.

• 15:58Chuck Nice?

  Eh, well, good. This is great.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lucky listener! Deal with it, okay. Lucky listener is the way I see it.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  They should be happy.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so let me, let's, uh, uh, Gary? Yes. Exploiting the fact that you are my co-host. Um, let's talk about soccer. And so, here's the thing, in a punch, in boxing, um, the fact that they wear gloves, uh, softens the, the impact, alright? The momentum still goes, but the, the kinetic energy, but the acceleration of the head is a little bit softened, because the, the glove has to squish, okay? Some of the energy gets absorbed into the squishing of the glove, alright? So that's why, you know, bare knuckles, you know, that's, what's the expression? Um, uh, Chuck, it's like they, uh, they took their gloves off, or they...

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bare knuckle, bare knuckle fighting. Yeah, just, just bare knuckle fighting.

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  We're taking the gloves off, dammit.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so it has been reported that boxing might be less damaging if it was done without gloves. Because you're, you would be knocked out sooner.

• 17:13Gary O'Reilly?

  And your teeth.

• 17:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because, because, no, because think about it. Because of the glove, the momentum is still getting put to your head. So your head gets snapped back a hundred times rather than just three times. Right? And even after the hundred times, there's still the time where you do get knocked out. So you get knocked out in both cases, except with gloves, you get hit in the head many, many more times. So that's been argued, but it would be bloodier because you'll be breaking skin more.

• 17:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's all. So in soccer, Gary, uh, when you make contact with the soccer ball.

• 17:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It seems to me it will go farthest if you hit it with something that is rigid, such as your head, because your skull is hard, or the, or, or the tip of the toe of your shoe. That's seems to be very hard places.

• 17:57Gary O'Reilly?

  The thing is, if you, if you use the tip of your boot, your cleat, your, your foot, you lose the control to direct it.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because it's so tiny.

• 18:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, it could, it can go anywhere. And it's a, it's a case of if you use a toe poke, as we call it, it's the point of last resort. Cause you've, you're trying just to stab it away or something like that.

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, gotcha, gotcha. So, so you are trading, um, distance with precision.

• 18:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. Um, the idea is to control the ball as an individual, control the ball as a team, and that depends on accuracy of passing or accuracy of shots on goal.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you all wear shin guards, right? Because there's nothing to protect your shin.

• 18:35Gary O'Reilly?

  We, we do now. We never used to.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, your day. We never.

• 18:39Gary O'Reilly?

  In my day, when, when men were men.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We didn't have shins.

• 18:44Chuck Nice?

  We played barefooted on a piss that ran uphill both ways.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and there were spikes and needles on the field.

• 18:55Gary O'Reilly?

  So the thing is, everybody understands the anatomy of the body, and the shin is not a place blessed with fatty tissue. It is directly bone. So imagine in the days when people didn't wear shin.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boxing, neither is your face. So, you know, you can punch people in the gut a lot because there's muscle to protect that. And it can wear you out a little, but not as much as it would wear you out if you get hit in the face. Plus, no one wants to punch anyone in their buttocks. There's no.

• 19:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Well. Yeah, I mean, there's, I'm sure there's a market for everything, but. If you think now.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Buttboxing.

• 19:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Someone's gonna sell it.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot of fleshy tissue there to absorb the punch.

• 19:36Gary O'Reilly?

  So if you think about soccer players, we call them boots, you would call them cleats. There's like a hard nylon plastic sole and then the studs or sort of oval cleats themselves. If that hits the shin, ouch. I mean, that's where legs get broken. That's where things go dramatically wrong. And you know, any soccer player that's had any time playing without shin guards, and we don't generally wear them in training, and sometimes players do get angry. There is a, there's a roadmap of scars down your shins because it just gets cut to ribbons. And yeah, it's painful because there's nothing there to protect you.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I knew somebody had scars and then he got a tattoo connecting the scars in an interesting sort of pattern.

• 20:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, that's fair enough. It's just when you get a tattoo and you pay X amount of thousands of dollars for it and then someone comes along and scars right across it.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After the fact.

• 20:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, waste of money.

• 20:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, I have to tell you that I, I'm no good for the rest of this show because right now, the only thing I can think about is buttboxing. How does it work?

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're still distracted.

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm like, do you chase the person around and try to hit him in the butt?

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's a reminder that the face is a more effective place to knock someone out than their buttocks. That's all.

• 20:57Chuck Nice?

  Well, then we should never say, I'm going to kick your ass. I'd be like, go right ahead.

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  Thanks for saving my face.

• 21:08Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, I think we've got slapstick comedy from the 1920s to thank for ass kicking. But go back, go back a step.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, let this be the moment that StarTalk announces to the world that of all the places on someone's body you want to kick, kicking their ass is the least damaging.

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You heard it here first.

• 21:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Go back a step and think about heading, Neil. Now, I played in a position as a defender, a central defender, where heading was. Pardon, pastor of the game.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heading is hitting the ball with your head?

• 21:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, now, that ball could be traveling towards me at thirty miles an hour, forty miles an hour.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure.

• 21:49Gary O'Reilly?

  I would then go to it. The similar thing that we said about in boxing, generally a knockout punch is the misfortune of you going forward and then punching into you. So what kind of forces are we dealing with here if I'm heading a soccer ball, but mind you, it's inflated?

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's basically double. So, so what's happening is the ball is moving forward at, let's say, thirty miles an hour. So let's put up a, let's put up a, a black screen, okay, just a screen so you can't see behind it. The ball enters the screen at thirty miles an hour and then exits the screen at thirty miles an hour. So something had to slow down the ball to zero and give it energy to go back at thirty miles an hour. Okay, so it's not just a matter of absorbing the forward momentum, it's also imparting the backwards momentum when it comes out.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If your head is doing all of that, you know, I, okay, I'll just, just, you're not gonna find me doing that. I'll put my hand up and hit it and just get the.

• 22:54Gary O'Reilly?

  No, the thing is, you would head a ball in a game, but then in training, you'd go away and practice heading a ball. So as you got better at it, now, I mean, my neck muscles when I was playing, I had something like a seventeen and a half inch, maybe even an eighteen inch neck.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 23:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, because you, you, you strengthen all of this area around here to give you a greater point of stability with your head. And, and you don't normally hit a hanging ball. You are, this ball is generally moving when you head it, so there's that combination of forces.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I can tell you this, if you have the choice, position yourself so that you're not hitting the wall back exactly where it came, that you're deflecting the ball to some other location. And in that way, that greatly reduces the, the momentum transfer because.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It becomes a momentum deflection, okay?

• 23:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, we call it a glancing header.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A glancing header, so it seems to me you should be able to position yourself to do it that way instead of sort of bouncing it straight back.

• 23:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes that ball's gonna come into the danger area of your goal. You have to head it as far away as possible. So the option is-

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause you have other, cause you have other people on the fence right around you, I guess. Okay. And, and so let's play, how about football and, and rugby? So they all have this equipment, you know, the whole point of the equipment is to absorb what they call it, the shock of an impact.

• 24:19Gary O'Reilly?

  But the rugby players don't, Neil. That's just it. They're, they're as big as the NFL guys and on occasions as athletic, but there's no pads. What, what gets hit is you. The only thing between you and your opponent is the jersey.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you, you tell, you tell us here in America we're wimps?

• 24:37Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did he just, Chuck, you heard that?

• 24:39Gary O'Reilly?

  No, there's a-

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  That's exactly what I heard.

• 24:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, well, you wanna hear what you wanna hear, so-

• 24:46Chuck Nice?

  I'm, I'm gonna let the NFL, uh, come, come talk to you.

• 24:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, they'll come talk to me again, bring all the big guys. So the, the thing is, it's, it's a difference. It's not a judgment, it's a difference and, uh, I think the NFL guys, um, it's that point of what gives you better protection. You've got dissipation of energy.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, just be clear. You can't tackle someone in any way that you want, correct?

• 25:11Gary O'Reilly?

  No, you have, there are, there are rules and regulations, cause it was invented by the British and therefore it'd be done by butlers and be very, very politely. No, it's, um, it's, you cannot pick up an opponent and spike them and that's been done before. And players have had their necks broken, uh, not good.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, but you have to, if you're gonna tackle them, it has to be from above the waist, is that correct?

• 25:32Gary O'Reilly?

  No, you can tackle below. You can tackle around the legs. You, uh, you can't tackle above the neck. There's certain rules.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, cause you can't grab their neck, okay, their head and snap that off.

• 25:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, there's no helmets, there's no pads, it's just- Slightly mad, demented guys who are rather large.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what's happening is all of the physics of the kinetic energy of the impact and the momentum is being absorbed into your physiology, into your musculature. So they probably are in great pain after each game.

• 26:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. For that reason. The other rule, Neil, is you can only tackle the man with the ball. There's no, all of a sudden you can just level somebody just because you feel like.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's true in, in, in American football as well, but you can, you can, uh, Chuck, what's the word where you, you, you roll in front of someone? There's a word for that. What's that? You can get in their way, um, but you can't tackle them if they don't have the ball. That's correct. Right, yeah, you can block in any kind of way, but you can't tack, you can only tackle.

• 26:30Gary O'Reilly?

  There's no blocking of anybody. It's just.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so you can't block in regular rugby, huh?

• 26:34Gary O'Reilly?

  No, you, there's a scrum and you sort of, the two, there's a group of players come together, equal number, they roll the ball in, which is weird because it's an X shape. Um, you roll that in between them, whoever gets to it first then dominates possession. And then you pass it, uh, you'll love this Neil, you can, here we go, let me get this right, you can only move forward by passing the ball backwards.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, lateral, sure.

• 26:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, but no, it has to go backwards. It can't go forwards, it has to be passed backwards.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. In, in, in American football, that's a lateral. That's a lateral, okay. In American football, yeah. Except the one case where I helped out a boy up in Seattle.

• 27:10Gary O'Reilly?

  And he's grateful.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a forward lateral on the gridiron, but it was a backward lateral to the running players.

• 27:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Galilean transformation. That's what you called it. I was trying to. No, it's not just what I call it, that's what it is, okay?

• 27:23Gary O'Reilly?

  So, Neil, what's, what's sort of.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not like I, I, I name this the Galilean transformation. I don't see the Galilean transformation. Russell Wilson threw backwards to his running back and they were going so fast the ball moved forward on, on the grid. But the running back was behind him the, the entire time. So for me, that was good. And I defended him with physics on Twitter and they, they let it stick. So I was very happy about that.

• 27:47Gary O'Reilly?

  So how much energy is dissipated by having pads?

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So quite a bit. So, so all it does is, instead of your muscles absorbing the energy, some of that energy gets absorbed in the pad. And so it's, so the, the energy gets shared with other things. Have you ever seen the shoulder pads on, on a football player? They're, they're, it's like a gladiator, it's, it's layers.

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so you hit one layer, that has to transfer that hit to the next layer, and then to the next layer, and then to your shoulder. So there's a lot of dissipation, that's the word here, going on before your body ends up absorbing it. And the same with the helmets. The better designed helmets, there, there's, the cushions will absorb the impact, uh, in a way that, to try to reduce the impact, the thing ends up in your brain. And so, cause your brain is just sort of floating there, right? It's not just rigidly held in place. So, um, so that's the whole point of pads. That's the entire point.

• 28:47Chuck Nice?

  Except that the pads actually make it so that there are hits that you may deliver, that you otherwise would not if you were not wearing pads. For instance, well, they've stopped this now, it's against the rules, to lead with your head. But for the longest time in, in the NFL, the way you tackled was to lead with your head and use those pads as a weapon, as, as much as you could.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what you would do is, if you're leading with your head, it means you're leading with the hardest part of your entire get out, get up. Okay. So, if you led with your shoulder, your, your shoulder pad will absorb some of the energy you're trying to put into your opponent. If you lead with your elbows, well, you've got flesh there and bone and tissue. If you lead with your helmet, if you have a strong neck, your helmet is rigid. Okay. Basically rigid on the impact. In other words, the helmet doesn't bend when you make contact with the other person. So if you saw the head tackles, yeah, those are, those are violent. I mean, oh my gosh.

• 29:53Gary O'Reilly?

  You've just weaponized the human body.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you've weaponized the human body.

• 29:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so what, what are the physics behind you'd rather be the hitter than the one being hit?

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you, all that matters is, how much, how, how massive are you? It's all about the mass. So.

• 30:08Gary O'Reilly?

  So I could, I could, I could run at someone at 20 miles an hour and if they're that big, I could bounce off them.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you bounce off them and then your energy, you know, gets reversed back into you and you suffer all the day. You're the one who gets hurt. You're the one who gets hurt and they look around saying, what was that? Was that a?

• 30:22Gary O'Reilly?

  You were too stupid not to see the really, really big guy and went to tackle him.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not an accident.

• 30:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the football players on the line, defense or offense, are the biggest players on the field.

• 30:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? Even if they could run fast, you'd still put them on the line because that's where you want to make sure nobody gets through.

• 30:41Gary O'Reilly?

  And it's, it's always the low guy wins.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it can, but if you're smart about it, you can, there are other ways you can maneuver, once you know where someone's center of mass is. But all other things being equal, yeah, if you're, if you're, if you crouch down low and someone comes to your shoulder, you just stand up and flip them over. I mean, there, there are ways of maneuvering that. I'm just saying, uh, knowledge of where the center of mass is of the person has great value to how it is you should be blocking them. And it's so, so, uh, just, so mass matters. And in the next segment, uh, we're going to talk about, uh, car crashes, not only in the street, but also, um, in races. In fact, we should take a break now and let's do that.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when we return, StarTalk Sports Edition, the physics of crashes and hits and getting pummeled, we're going to talk about the physics of car crashes.

• 31:36Gary O'Reilly?

  And butt boxing.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Butt boxing? Yeah! And Chuck will talk about butt boxing. I'm all about it, baby. When we return.

• 32:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, Gary O'Reilly. Gary? Hey! Tweeting as MyThreeLeftFeet or something? What's your Twitter handle? Correct, yes. All words, MyThreeLeftFeet. MyThreeLeftFeet, alright. And Chuck, tweeting at ChuckNiceComic. Yes, sir, thank you. Very good. And let me remind people, you have a TED Talk. Just want to remind people of that. I appreciate that, yeah. Where you're just sort of getting on the case of technology and how it has changed the human dynamic. That was funny, I really enjoyed it. Oh, I'm glad you liked it, thanks, yeah. It should be easy to find, just, you know, Google TED. ChuckNiceTed. ChuckNiceTed. And if there's a guy named TedChuck who's nice, that's not the right one. Right, exactly. Screw that guy.

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That guy.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  I don't care how nice TedChuck is.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, tweet us and tell us just how good he isn't.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're talking about hits and the physics of hits. We didn't give full attention to baseball because I want to come back to baseball with its own entire episode. Because there's just so much to explore there, especially coming around the playoff season. But, let's now talk about cars. Alright, so, before we get to the racetrack, you all know, probably, because I think you've seen ads, that if you buy a car and they talk about its safety, I think they've gotten the message across that one of the things that makes a car safe is, in addition to airbags, is that it has crumple zones. Yes. So, if you get a side impact, rear impact, front impact,

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and that, if that energy goes to crumpling the car, then it does not go into crumpling you. I like that. Provided you are in a casing so that the casing is not part of what gets squished. So, the whole exercise is do everything you can to dissipate the kinetic energy. That's the entire point of this exercise. There's no other point, okay? So, um, so...

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watch what happens. If you have a very high mass car, okay, very high mass, and a low mass car slams into you, the high mass car barely will notice this. And it's the low mass car who will need the crumple zones to save its occupant. Okay? So, this happened to me, all right? My very first car was a land yacht. It was gifted to me. I didn't even know how to drive when it was gifted the car from someone who died. It's a long story. But anyhow, I had this car.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  Wait, now you gotta tell us what it is, because back in the day, there were so many great land yachts.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, this land yacht, it was a Mercury Montego 400 cubic inch engine. I got seven miles per gallon with a tailwind, okay?

• 35:04Chuck Nice?

  Wait.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Downhill with a tailwind, nine miles a gallon. All right. So, this is long ago. And plus it ran on regular gas. So this thing was like-

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Laded?

• 35:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laded gas, when they still even served leaded. Here's the point. I'm sitting there at a red light, okay? There's a car in front of me. I forgot what car that was, might have been a Toyota. There was a Volvo behind me, which is sitting there at the red light. Then, I just hear a big crash. And immediately after that crash, I lurch forward. And my car then bumps into the car in front of me. Okay?

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I look back. The Volvo got crunched in the rear and in the front. It was the Volvo that got hit. It got hit by one of these TR7 sports cars.

• 35:57Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it plowed under the rear of the Volvo, damaged the back of the Volvo. The front of the Volvo was damaged. The driver was perfectly safe, as you'd expect in a Volvo. The driver in front of me, sorry, it was a Honda, a Japanese lighter car. For the day, these were very light cars. And relative to other cars on the road. And that person, you know, the neck was in a brace. And the car got, the rear of the car got damaged. My car? There was a little chip in the taillight, plastic cover. And that was it. So I backed up and drove home. So, so, so if you have very high mass, the concept of crumple zones, I mean, that's relative to other cars.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The concept of crumple zones is not, it doesn't matter. Okay? You don't talk about front-end collisions with cement trucks. Okay? Unless it's a cement truck in a collision with another cement truck. Alright? So, higher mass almost always wins every day. Okay? In an encounter. So now, let's get back to the racetrack, where every car is exactly the same mass. Alright? They go very high speeds. Very high kinetic energy. Okay? Uh, let's say there's a disturbance on the track. A wheel flies off, car loses control, and it tumbles. Oh, right! Okay? Yes. Now, now you're getting Chuck's interest.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I'm liking some, I'm liking NASCAR right now. Okay. Yes. So, so, and it's not uncommon to see the car just tumble and pivot, and they make spectacular videos. And the car breaks into pieces, and it slides and tumbles, and it goes a quarter mile down the track. It was going 200 miles an hour going into the accident. And then the car comes to a stop, and the driver gets out and walks away. If you don't know physics, you'll say to yourself, "That's a miracle!" Because you're paying attention to the car getting damaged. Without thinking to yourself that that's exactly what you want to happen

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to protect the life of the driver. You want everything else to get destroyed. That's the NASCAR version of a crumple zone. Right? It's have the thing fly by. It takes energy to fling a tire off to the side. Okay? You ever think about that? You try to throw a tire into the, well, that car's, part of that car's energy went off with the tire. Other part went to the tumbling and the pivot and the friction. And all of that happens. Then it comes to a rest. Took a quarter mile to go from 200 miles an hour to zero. And the driver walks. Now, here's the catch. The catch is, the driver goes from 200 miles an hour to zero over that length of time and over that length of distance.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That reduced the rate of deceleration on the body. It is the rate of deceleration that kills you. Okay, that's what kills you. You want to slow that down as much as possible. So, let's go back to Dale Earnhardt. Okay, the tragic death of Dale Earnhardt. If you look at his accident, okay, uh, he, uh, his car, uh, hit, uh, the side embankment? And he went from 200 miles an hour to zero in, what was it, a second or, or, or at most?

• 39:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh. So, so, so forget the car. His body is going 200 miles an hour, then his body is going zero. Where does that kinetic energy go? It goes back into his body.

• 39:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that basically kill, kills him. The body can't sustain.

• 39:48Chuck Nice?

  It's like he got crushed by 200 miles an hour.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basically, basically, that's correct. So you keep thinking, you die because something crushes you or hurts you that way. You've gotta lose 200 miles an hour.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That kinetic energy has to go somewhere. That's why asteroids that are not too big, that would make it all the way to the ground, the kind that'll sort of explode in midair, you'd say, why would it explode? Did it have TNT? No, it's going 10 miles a second, and it sees air. All right? Air feels like, oh, it's, you can move through it. Not if you're going 10 miles a second. It's like a brick wall if you're moving at 10 miles a second. And evidence of this is, if you're going 60 mile, 55 miles an hour down the freeway, and you roll down your window, stick your hand out, uh, you'll feel wind blowing against your wrist that's hard to resist. Try it, try it next time. Just going 50, 50 miles an hour.

• 40:42Chuck Nice?

  What's better is if you stick your face out, your whole cheeks fill up with air.

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Chuck, have you had a species check? Are you a dog? Have your tongue dangling?

• 40:54Chuck Nice?

  I might be, because it's a lot of fun.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wonder what gene in the wolf survived such that the dog wants to put his head out the window. That means a wolf would enjoy that.

• 41:06Gary O'Reilly?

  That's right.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what that means.

• 41:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Could you imagine driving along and a car comes towards you and there's a wolf hanging out?

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do totally.

• 41:15Gary O'Reilly?

  You'd give it the side of your life.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dogs like it. We made dog, we invented dogs for, dogs are GMOs by the way. We, the first GMO we ever had. We invented dogs from wolves, wolf genes. So that's gotta be a gene somewhere in the wolf, but we'll see.

• 41:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Nice.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anyhow, so, um, so the, the air resistance just at 50 miles an hour is significant. So now it comes in, it has the kinetic energy of its mass moving at 10 miles per second. And then it stops moving because the air resistance prevents it. Where does that kinetic energy go? It goes back into the object instantaneously. And the only way the object can respond to that is to heat up catastrophically. And when you heat something catastrophically, it explodes. So, and, and so, so the point, my point here is Dale Earnhardt, um, did not slow down slowly. He slowed down quickly. That's what kills you.

• 42:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the, the YouTube compilation, and they walked and they show these fiery collisions. Uh, and, and then they, yeah, they, yeah, yeah. Plus they're in a roll cage, right? So that helps of course. And they're wearing fireproof, um, um, fire resistant.

• 42:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Jumpsuits.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, jumpsuits. So even if it catches on fire, you know, they've had a little bit of time to get out as long as they're not knocked unconscious, right? So, and plus there are people all around to help. My point is that the fact that the crash is spectacular is not alone enough information to judge how lethal it is. That's all. And the faster you come to a stop, generally the less likely you will survive that collision. That's why cars, when they encounter trees. Doesn't bode well for the driver. Generally, but if you if you careen off the side of the the cliff, not the cliff, but the the side, the

• 43:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Embankment.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then the car rolls, if you have on your seatbelt, if you don't have your seatbelt, you break your neck. Because you're you're you're moving a projectile inside the car. If you have your seatbelt and the car rolls and it comes to a stop down the thing, okay. Okay, you'll you'll probably walk from that accident. Because it took time for the car to come to a stop.

• 43:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Cool.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so that's just a little bit of fact about that, that I think is not as appreciated as it needs to be. And so and a good thing about NASCAR and and Formula One, all those cars have basically the same mass. So when one bumps the other, you know, it's like the the balls on a string, you know.

• 43:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, the the bumping is sort of your your sort of equal, it's equal access bumping.

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The momentum goes over, you you you, uh, no one has a mass advantage is the point in in the race. The way you could have if you drove a drove a Hummer in the street in a world of Ugos. I don't think they make those anymore. What's the what's the little car, the um?

• 44:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Fiat.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the the little Fiat.

• 44:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Fiat Cinco Cento.

• 44:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes. So, uh, so what we need.

• 44:24Gary O'Reilly?

  We need to reinvent NASCAR.

• 44:25Chuck Nice?

  Monster truck NASCAR.

• 44:28Gary O'Reilly?

  With rocket, with rockets.

• 44:31Chuck Nice?

  That's what we need.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, if everything scales up exactly the same, then everything is just the same.

• 44:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, no, no, I just mean one person gets to have a monster truck.

• 44:40Gary O'Reilly?

  That person would be you, Chuck, am I wrong?

• 44:41Chuck Nice?

  You know it would be, yeah.

• 44:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, and and say, why are these cars in front of me? Let me just roll over to get to the front of the pack.

• 44:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Is there anything that can be done to make them even safer? I mean, Chuck and I have reinvented NASCAR in the past by putting Saturn V rockets on them.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and you and you've reinvented boxing to make that safer by punching in the buttocks, yes.

• 45:01Gary O'Reilly?

  It was obvious to us. Um, is there anything you could do to dissipate energy better?

• 45:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Collisions.

• 45:11Chuck Nice?

  What could you do to the walls? Because they're, I mean, you gotta hit something.

• 45:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, interesting.

• 45:15Chuck Nice?

  So what could you do to the walls to make it, uh, to have the transfer of energy absorbed by the wall?

• 45:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Barrels of water, those big barrels of water.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so we already kinda have that. Joe, you've seen it in, in off-ramps from freeways.

• 45:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's, um, if there's a sort of a wedge where the road divides, there typically there's the big yellow tanks. They could have sand, they could have water, something to absorb the energy. Okay? Uh, thinking of other ways to absorb energy, they have in long sustained downhills, trucks, if they, if they lose their brakes, they have these runaway truck lanes where they pull off to the side and it's just this loose gravel and the wheel doesn't, um, move well in gravel and the gravel just eats away the kinetic energy and the, and it comes to a stop. So, uh, we have tried to be clever about this and I think in Le Mans, uh, is it where there's stretches of road where they just build up tires, uh, in case the tires are,

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  are, are hard to squeeze, but at high speed and high energy, you do squeeze them and which means they absorb a lot of energy, this sort of thing. So, uh, we have given some thought, we, the people who design these, have given thought to it. And so, uh, and I think fewer race car drivers are dying today than who once did. And on StarTalk, we had Mario Andretti, do you remember that?

• 46:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to ask him about a famous quote attributed to him and sure enough, it was this quote, he said, "If you are in complete control of your car, you're not in the race." So.

• 46:50Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense.

• 46:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so when you see cars just on the brink and completely lose control, that's, that's kinda what he's talking about. You're, you're, this, this is a very finely tuned, highly honed performance of driving, driving skill. So, uh, and one other thing, I just want to talk about, um, uh, track and field, um, in the, in the high jump and especially in the pole vault.

• 47:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now we have enough information to ask, why don't, why doesn't the pole vault-er land on cement?

• 47:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. That could be one and done. Why not ask that question? The reason is, they would be going from-

• 47:30Chuck Nice?

  Because he would break both his legs.

• 47:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Full speed to zero speed in a fraction of a second. And all that kinetic energy goes back into their body. Oh, how much energy does it take to break your femur? I have that energy available. Let's do it. What does it take to break your neck? That energy's available. Let's do it. And you break all these bones until all the damage to your body equals the kinetic energy you had on the fall. That's why jumping out of windows can be so deadly. Because when you hit the ground, all that energy goes back into your body, and it finds things to break. Okay? And that's, that's how this works.

• 48:11Chuck Nice?

  Well, if, if one good thing comes out of this show, it's the fact that perhaps we will lower the number of people jumping out of windows.

• 48:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And, and, but just to be clear, and the pole vaulter lands in big cushion lee pillows.

• 48:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Extending the time it takes to go from their, their highest speed to zero.

• 48:30Chuck Nice?

  And they don't, and they, and they stretch themselves out at that. They don't even land like, you know, like they're just coming straight down. They, they fall back and stretch out when they land too.

• 48:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That can help, that can help. Yeah, but- So you're increasing the mass or the, this- The cross section. Yes. The cross section, so more of the cushion can support your body. Yeah. Dudes, we, we gotta, we gotta like call it- We done? There. Oh, man. Wow, that was fun. Yeah. We gotta come back and do this again. And we did that. And plus, we're gonna offload baseball to its own, um, you know, all the, baseball as a contact sport. Maybe we'll call it that.

• 49:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 49:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't even touched on ice hockey yet. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ice hockey. Oh, man. Okay.

• 49:14Chuck Nice?

  I want a version of baseball where everybody on the field gets a bat.

• 49:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do, what do they do with the bat? No, no, no, no, a version where if the pitcher hits the batter with the ball, they calculate how much kinetic energy the ball had, and then they allow you to hit the pitcher with your bat with that same amount of kinetic energy. Wow. Then that'll be even Steven and you continue the game. Let me tell you something, that would end. Physics. No, that would end people getting hit with balls. Yeah. You just found the answer. That could work, that could work. Guys, we gotta run. This'll be fun and we should do this again because we only really scratched the surface. But the physics is everywhere and that's the good thing about physics. You can know things because of the fundamental rules that undergird what's going on, even if you've never actually played the sport.

• 50:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's just, that's science, that's how and why science works for us all. So Gary, good to have you.

• 50:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 50:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As always Chuck, thanks for being my comedic co-host. You bring that force of levity to it all.

• 50:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Buttboxing is the new thing, remember.

• 50:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Buttboxing. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Forrest Starr Talk Sports Edition. Keep looking up. You