Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast #ICYMI - Golf Science, with Geoff Ogilvy and Neil deGrasse Tyson About this episode Aerodynamics, Doppler radar, laser tracking, and big data! Gary and Chuck find out how science has guided the evolution of golf, from why balls have dimples to how clubs are designed, with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and, from the PGA Tour, 3x world golf champion Geoff Ogilvy.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:10 Speaker 00 I'm Gary O'Reilly.
0:10 Speaker 01 And I'm Chuck Knotts.
0:11 Speaker 00 And this is Playing with Science. Today, we have to drive ourselves, bring our own chips, and I will get my own tea, which will be splendid. Ah, yes, we will be accountable for our own scores and things could get a little rough.
0:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, but never fear. Ogilvy is here in the shape of Jeff Ogilvy, a golfer who is, in his time, ranked number four in the world and owner of not one, not two, not three, yes, three world championships.
0:42 Speaker 00 And lest we forget today's smooth operator, who is all back of the golf buggy with his feet up, it's, of course, our very own Neil deGrasse Tyson. Well, let's get straight to it, shall we? Up on the first tee, Jeff Ogilvy, a man who won the US Open in 2006. Jeff, welcome to Playing with Science.
1:01 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:01 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:02 Speaker 01 And we also have with us.
1:04 Speaker 00 Oh, don't we?
1:05 Speaker 01 Yes, the man himself, the myth, the legend. I have just decided.
1:10 Speaker 00 Have you?
1:10 Speaker 01 To start calling him Rocket Man. Rocket Man is here with us. And it's none other than our very own Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.
1:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I need a haircut if I'm gonna be Rocket Man. I need a new do.
1:26 Speaker 00 You need extensions and all sorts of work for that. But anyway.
1:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, just a quick thing. You said not one, but two, but three.
1:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There are certain tribes in the world that do not count anything beyond three.
1:38 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
1:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's just one, two, three, and then many.
1:41 Speaker 00 Right.
1:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, there's just no, they don't care.
1:44 Speaker 02 It's quite sensible, isn't it?
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, four, or 50, or 100, it's just more than what I care about.
1:49 Speaker 00 More than three, right.
1:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
1:49 Speaker 00 More than I can get in my hands. Yeah.
1:51 Speaker 02 We work with golf. Three is good in golf.
1:53 Speaker 01 It's good in golf, yes, it is.
1:55 Speaker 02 We might move there.
1:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. And by the way, that means you have to win just one more championship, Jeff, and then it'll just be many.
2:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Many.
2:02 Speaker 02 Many, yeah.
2:03 Speaker 01 Right. It's just like, how many champions do you have?
2:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Many.
2:06 Speaker 01 Many.
2:07 Speaker 00 Okay, so you're here in New York, and I'm... Thinking because you got lovely cap and a sweater on that it's all about the president's cup. So let us know exactly what's going on.
2:17 Speaker 01 What is the president's cup?
2:18 Speaker 00 Yes, please.
2:18 Speaker 01 Because some of our listeners are just sports fans, but they're maybe just discovering golf. So what is it?
2:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? President of what?
2:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whose president's cup is it?
2:27 Speaker 01 I'm the president of golf. That's right. Okay, sorry.
2:31 Speaker 02 Well, I guess if you've been on this planet for a while, I guess you probably have heard of something called the Ryder Cup.
2:38 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
2:39 Speaker 02 Which is
2:40 Speaker 00 Yes.
2:40 Speaker 02 Basically, the European tour versus the US tour in golf.
2:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:45 Speaker 02 Um, kind of a bragging rights kind of thing. It's been going on for a really long time. And that's become a really, really big event. Um, but that's owned by the PGA of America, the PGA Tour, which is really kind of the powerful organization, which kind of runs the tour on a regular basis, kind of wanted to get in on the mix. So they created their own thing called the President's Cup, which is the US team versus everyone else in the world except for Europe, which is quite a lot of good golfers.
3:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
3:10 Speaker 02 Generally, there's four or five of the top 10 in the world of this, out of that sort of area of the world. So Tour created this event, I think in the early 90s. Um, this is about nine or 10 now. It's every two years, every other Ryder Cup year. So it's, um, this year at Liberty National, which is staring at the Statue of Liberty and the skyline of New York.
3:30 Speaker 01 And happens to be the very best golf club in the world outside of any other golf club I own. So sorry.
3:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's one of those.
3:41 Speaker 00 That was well done, Jeff.
3:42 Speaker 02 We're staying, uh.
3:44 Speaker 01 Good man, this guy, he knows what he's doing.
3:45 Speaker 02 We're staying down, um, kind of Wall Street way and we battery park, we get the ferry every day.
3:50 Speaker 01 Yes, beautiful.
3:51 Speaker 02 If anyone, uh, ever wants to see professional golfers actually get truly passionate, go to a president's cup or Ryder Cup, because it means a lot more when you're playing for.
4:01 Speaker 00 Who's gonna win? One word answer.
4:02 Speaker 02 Internationals.
4:03 Speaker 00 There you go.
4:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? President, does it refer to?
4:06 Speaker 02 All of the above.
4:08 Speaker 00 Right.
4:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The presidents.
4:09 Speaker 00 The many's.
4:10 Speaker 01 Of every president that's ever been.
4:12 Speaker 02 Forty five of them.
4:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Forty five of them. Oh, of, oh, it's American president's cup.
4:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay. I'm sorry.
4:17 Speaker 00 All right, that's cool.
4:18 Speaker 02 They had to have a name and it was a good name. The president's didn't have one, so now they've got one.
4:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
4:22 Speaker 00 Has there been one thing in your career as a professional that you've gone that really changed the game? And it's kind of like the science, the technology that really thought that's really elevated it.
4:31 Speaker 02 Oh, wow. Yeah. Um, I mean, there might not be a sport that's had the. Kind of money thrown at R and D that golf has.
4:40 Speaker 00 Uh huh.
4:40 Speaker 02 Uh, equipment, biomechanics and physiology, psychology, turf management. I mean, it's,
4:49 Speaker 02 it's an amazing sport for the science and the research side of things, but the technology with the ball and the driver, the equipment especially has been, it's, it's a completely different sport we're playing now than it was, say 20 years ago.
4:59 Speaker 01 Wow.
4:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, but there are many sports where you introduce a new technology and everyone says, oh, can't do that. That's not traditional. We got to go back to the way it used to. Is golf just completely open to whatever will improve the game from one year to the next? Or is there some tribunal that is saying, no, no, no, no, no?
5:14 Speaker 02 It's interesting. I mean, there are ruling bodies that seem to be the tribunal and they kind of control the show like they do in the world, you know, big brother up there. But uh, there's a debate, I guess. I mean, golf was the same for a really long time on really old school golf courses.
5:28 Speaker 00 Hmm.
5:29 Speaker 02 Played with woods and kind of almost handmade stuff.
5:32 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Isn't that why they're called woods?
5:35 Speaker 02 Well, they were wooden originally.
5:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what I'm saying, right? So, so that's not some stretch of vocabulary.
5:40 Speaker 02 No, it was actually a literal uh, description. Yeah. Um, and it just, I guess the commercial, it's such a popular game, the commercial uh, kind of realization of we could sell a lot of these golf clubs and we make them go further and make them easier to hit. So.
5:54 Speaker 01 Right.
5:54 Speaker 02 Um, it's been a massive, the progress since kind of mid 1980s has been huge.
6:00 Speaker 00 What's taken it further, the ball or the clubs in terms of the technology and the advancement?
6:05 Speaker 01 And, and with that follow-up, I know you have a favorite ball and I want to know why.
6:10 Speaker 02 Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, really it's a combination, probably more than anything.
6:14 Speaker 00 Alright.
6:15 Speaker 02 Because they've mastered combining balls and drivers with golfers. They kind of match the whole thing. I mean, there's a few things that go into it.
6:23 Speaker 00 Okay.
6:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, you're telling me custom drivers and custom ball?
6:28 Speaker 02 Well, very, very adjustable with lots of variables. So you can get different heads, different loft, different shaft, different weight, different grip.
6:36 Speaker 00 Different language. He's speaking in tongues now.
6:39 Speaker 02 And you can change it all.
6:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The syllables coming out of his mouth.
6:41 Speaker 00 See, the thing is, if you're, if you're a guy can really hit the ball a long way on a, on a drive, you're going to have a particular type of club and go with a particular type of setup on the ball because the, for a layman, you're thinking the ball is dimpled. Yes, we understand that. And they're all the same, but they're not, are they? They come in a various set, set patterns.
7:02 Speaker 02 They do. I mean, for all intents and purposes, I guess the better you are, the more difference the ball makes.
7:08 Speaker 01 Oh, now that makes sense because if you suck, it does not make a difference how dimpled or what pattern of dimple the ball has because you suck. But if you are highly proficient, those small changes to the physicality of the ball can actually become a measurable difference in your game.
7:28 Speaker 02 Incredible. Visible difference.
7:29 Speaker 01 Visible difference.
7:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, incredible.
7:31 Speaker 01 That's amazing.
7:31 Speaker 02 So I guess there's two, there's a few things that make a ball go far and straight. And it's, uh, speed.
7:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Talent.
7:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:40 Speaker 00 Thank you, doctor.
7:41 Speaker 02 Talent probably will.
7:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Come to me when you need, when you need this.
7:44 Speaker 02 The club head speed, the speed the club head is moving.
7:47 Speaker 01 Right.
7:50 Speaker 02 Where the club, the ball hits on the face. If it hits in the sweet spot or like a weaker spot, which can affect line and spin and speed and drag on the ball in the air, I guess.
8:01 Speaker 01 So before we go any further, since we have world renowned astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson sitting here, can you please break down just so that those listening can know, uh, what the effect of dimpling a ball will have? Uh, why does it make the ball go farther? And if you change the pattern of the dimple, what would that do?
8:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, all I know is that I, I think you should get NASA on this. So they can, you're talking about new technology. They get a ball that has little rockets in it and then it can go like five miles.
8:32 Speaker 00 You've been around Chuck too long.
8:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I still think there's improvements awaiting. But correct me if I'm wrong here, from reading the history of golf, the golf balls used to be just perfect little spheres, like any other ball we play with. And people discovered, just accidentally, really, that that highly-used balls that were all dinged and nicked were traveling farther than perfectly-new balls that had no blemishes on them at all, no nicks and dings. And so, they decided to exploit this fact and figure out what kind of nicks and dings would make it go farthest. And it turns out that the aerodynamics around a perfectly smooth ball, the air sort of hugs the surface of the ball, and when it comes to the back, creates a partial vacuum and
9:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? puts drag on the ball. Yeah, so it's just aerodynamic drag. But if you put dimples on it, it breaks up right on the surface of the ball, it breaks that up, so that by the time, it's a rotating ball. So by the time the air gets to the back, it doesn't create the same vacuum that it would if the ball were smooth. Now, the opposite effect is true if the ball's not spinning, but you're not, that's not, that never happens in the sport. So, the ball's not spinning, if you had a ball that looked like, you know those cone heads that they used to wear in the bicycle races?
9:49 Speaker 01 Yes.
9:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, yeah, the aerodynamic thing. If you did that, then you control that flow of air all the way to the back without any kind of drag at all. But that's not how, it's a round ball. It's not a cone head ball.
10:01 Speaker 01 Which, by the way, my favorite Saturday Night Live sketch, Cone Head Ball. Since we're sitting here in NBC Studios, I figured I'd bring that on.
10:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, that's right. Nice, nice, nice touch there. That's all I can tell you about the ball. Now, if you're gonna have patterns of dimples on balls that have a more subtle effect than what I'm describing, then that's beyond my physics 101.
10:24 Speaker 01 Cool. So the dimple actually acts like-
10:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't say it's cool that I just said I'm ignorant on something.
10:29 Speaker 01 No, no, it's cool what you just said. And by the way, it is cool that you're ignorant on something, because I've known you long enough to know that that's a cool thing. So, Jeff, when you talk about, so Gary said there are patterns, right?
10:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, so the size of the dimple varies, it's not a standardized pattern around the ball, and the patterns on the dimples and such.
10:50 Speaker 02 No, it's generally- From what I understand, it's somewhere around 400 dimples.
10:56 Speaker 00 Okay.
10:56 Speaker 02 Somewhere around. They used to sell them with like 392 or 384, like the amount of dimples on the ball. And they're very in size from what I, I mean, you look at it, they all look the same.
11:04 Speaker 00 Yes.
11:05 Speaker 02 But they're in little patterns of triangles and big ones and small ones and different depth.
11:09 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
11:09 Speaker 02 Dimples.
11:09 Speaker 01 Some of the balls have really big. Different sizes even on the same ball.
11:12 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:13 Speaker 02 Yeah. So they have different sizes in diameter and different sizes in depth.
11:18 Speaker 00 The guys have been thinking. The guys have been thinking.
11:21 Speaker 01 And like you said.
11:22 Speaker 02 A lot of research.
11:23 Speaker 01 That probably only makes a difference to somebody who is on a level of play.
11:27 Speaker 02 You know, they're unbelievable. I have to say, I mean, anyone who's played golf would understand that a ball can curve to the left and be a hook or curve to the right. And be a slice for a right hander. The dimple patterns they're managing to create these days actually self correct that a little bit.
11:41 Speaker 01 So the ball's going straight.
11:42 Speaker 02 Ball will be hooking into the left trees and it won't actually go back the other way, but it will stop curving and start going straight.
11:48 Speaker 00 I know what the guys are like when it comes to when you redesign a ball and make it do certain things as you've just described. The top end players, I'm going to include you in that, Jeff. You're happy about that. You'll start to think, how can I use that to my advantage? Cause if it's a self correcting ball, I know I can do something with that for my advantage. Have the guys worked that out yet?
12:07 Speaker 02 Definitely. I mean, well.
12:08 Speaker 01 He's trying to be like bend it like Beckham, you know, he's got a little soccer background in this man right here.
12:14 Speaker 00 I know that's the way you'd be thinking.
12:15 Speaker 02 For sure. I mean, it's a, for those of us who grew up with the older stuff.
12:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:19 Speaker 02 The evolution of golf equipment was pretty linear, if you like.
12:23 Speaker 01 You had to go there in my day.
12:26 Speaker 01 I remember.
12:28 Speaker 02 This gray hair measures all that.
12:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, for sure.
12:31 Speaker 01 Back in my day.
12:32 Speaker 02 The, the evolution of golf equipment was a fairly linear improvement until mid eighties and a guy called Carsten Solheim, who started the pin company.
12:41 Speaker 00 Yes.
12:41 Speaker 02 Who actually I think was a rocket scientist of some.
12:44 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
12:45 Speaker 02 He completely changed the guy. He showed us the technology. He moved the weight outside on irons and he was more of a golf club guy, but he took a massive step forward. And since then, it's been changing. So those of us who grew up with a ball that continued to curve, we're still kind of retraining our instincts to trust that it won't curve as much as it used to.
13:05 Speaker 00 Intuitive.
13:06 Speaker 01 And so then you would adjust your shot accordingly, right? Or leave your shot the same accordingly, depending upon what you know the ball will do.
13:14 Speaker 02 Well, you just hopefully you gradually adjust to. How far your new ball is going, how much the wind, because the crosswind
13:22 Speaker 00 Yes.
13:22 Speaker 02 is quite important for us and the modern ball gets hit a lot less by a crosswind.
13:26 Speaker 00 Gotcha.
13:27 Speaker 02 Which I assume is a
13:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You mean influence less?
13:29 Speaker 02 Influence, yes, to use the right terminology.
13:31 Speaker 00 There you go.
13:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You hit the ball, it influences it, yeah.
13:33 Speaker 02 It influences it, yeah. So it does a lot less than it used to.
13:36 Speaker 00 Okay. You talk about club development and we did a show recently, Chuck and I, with tennis rackets.
13:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:41 Speaker 00 And again, and they made, uh, I think it was Prince came out with the, back in the eighties again, the larger head, which made it a larger sweet spot.
13:51 Speaker 02 Right.
13:52 Speaker 00 Are they able to do that on a golf club to get a larger sweet spot? Because you talked about it just before about you've got to find it on the sweet spot all the time to get the strike that you want.
14:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, they have. I mean, I guess traditionally golf clubs were just really simple, small.
14:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:07 Speaker 02 Um, and before they really did any of this, this kind of launch, this, this kind of high speed camera, scientific research of impact and kind of what happens at impact with the ball.
14:19 Speaker 00 Hmm.
14:20 Speaker 02 Um, they were really small and you had a, you had a sweet spot, maybe the size of a nickel, maybe.
14:25 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
14:25 Speaker 02 Where the, it would go optimally.
14:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:29 Speaker 02 Optimally, is that all right?
14:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, optimally, yeah. Is it Aussie nickel or an American nickel?
14:33 Speaker 02 We have a five cent piece.
14:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:35 Speaker 00 But would you know, because when, when we talk to baseball players and we talk to the tennis players, they say the same thing. You know, the second you've hit it through the vibration or lack of and by your ear. Do you have the same feeling?
14:48 Speaker 02 Both, yeah. You can tell instantly if you've got it right or wrong. I mean, it's the same with a lot of stuff, right? But, uh, we get pretty tuned to that.
14:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I, there's a, there's a friend of mine, a trainer actually, who plays baseball. And he said, when you hit the ball in the right spot and the right thing, there is no vibration.
15:03 Speaker 00 Hmm.
15:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the ball goes 400 feet and he says, and he paused, he said, It's better than sex.
15:13 Speaker 00 What does it add? JP Allen Sibio, who was a baseball hitter and is a catcher for the Blue Jays.
15:18 Speaker 01 Yes.
15:18 Speaker 00 He said, oh no, it was Jeff Blum from the Houston Astros. He said, it was like a handful of bees. If he hit.
15:24 Speaker 01 If you hit the wrong way.
15:25 Speaker 00 If you hit it wrong, it was like a handful.
15:26 Speaker 01 Holding a hornet's nest.
15:27 Speaker 00 Shoots up your arms and everything.
15:29 Speaker 01 Why don't we get into like, uh, shot tracking?
15:32 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
15:32 Speaker 01 Because I.
15:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, but before you do that.
15:33 Speaker 01 Go ahead. Yes.
15:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Before you do that, this idea that the ball cannot curve in the way you thought it would. I'm, I'm just imagining a future where it's nothing but a game of trick shots like in billiards. If you keep going with the ball, the ball might, you know, just.
15:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, the trees over here. Let me just curve it around the tree. But, you know, do a, put some English on it to the left and do a three cushion back shot.
15:54 Speaker 00 So many things. Keep putting English on it. It doesn't sound like I'm doing the right thing. That just means curve. They say that to me and I'm like, what's going on?
16:03 Speaker 01 So the, I, I know you guys are, uh, tracking, uh, shots, uh, using several different technologies, but Doppler is one of them. What are they doing with Doppler in the, in the P, in the PGA?
16:14 Speaker 02 Uh, well, when we first started, when they started really chasing the R and D and the golf club and the golf ball, they started working out they needed to take all the data from impact, from the speed of the club, where it hits the whole thing. So they started taking photos of impact. And then they thought, well, it'd be much better if we actually, after the photo, knew what the ball did in relation to what happened to the ball with that photo. So they.
16:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:39 Speaker 02 They created a little thing, a Doppler radar at the back of the ball, um, that you put kind of behind where you're hitting shot. And you just hit shots and it measures club speed, club path, ball speed, ball flight. It follows the whole flight of the ball until it finishes.
16:54 Speaker 00 It started with 3D analytics, the whole, with the swing and then the, the speed of impact.
17:01 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
17:01 Speaker 00 So as you teach a golfer, not just to swing, but to swing, but to get maximum speed at the point of impact, not halfway through.
17:08 Speaker 02 And this, these, uh. Doppler kind of ball trackers help you do that naturally because you you put your iPad or your phone with the app open kind of down right in front of your pile of balls or next to your bag and every shot you hit it's instant feedback. It's spin rate, how far it went, where it went.
17:26 Speaker 01 Spin rate.
17:27 Speaker 02 Spin rate of the ball.
17:28 Speaker 01 Spin rate of the ball. Holy crap.
17:30 Speaker 02 Both backspin and any sort of. And you'll know, need to know that.
17:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, so that, so that means it is measuring not only in the center part of the ball, which will give you the ball's speed, but other, the above the halfway point and below the halfway point. So you get a rotation rate. So this is a very precise Doppler measurement.
17:48 Speaker 02 I, I, from what I understand, it's very precise. I mean, you would understand how they get to where they.
17:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, the point is if the ball's spinning, then the part, the part that's spinning across your view, which is the nearest part of the ball to you, is neither coming towards you nor away from you. Cause it used to be coming towards you. Now it's going away from you. So in that moment is doing neither. You have to measure it there to get the actual pure speed of the ball. Otherwise, if you measure it, the speed of the ball in either other spot, you're going to have less or more because the ball's spinning. Right? So but now, now you, now you want to do that on purpose to get the actual spin rate of the ball. So this is, this is more than what I was even imagining that you guys are up to.
18:24 Speaker 01 Well, they use, I know they use lasers. So what is the difference, Neil, you between like tracking something with lasers and what is regular Doppler?
18:33 Speaker 02 Okay. Well, he can answer the Doppler, but the Doppler is a radar that follows the ball. It tracks exactly what the ball does and does that. The lasers that we use on tour are, they kind of have three of them. They create all these triangles so they can get the data from where our balls go after every shot. So we finish our round, we see that we hit it 275 yards on the first and then hit it to 20 feet with a five on and then we hold a 20 foot putt and then we went to the next. And you compile data like this. Every round we play on tour is measured. Every single shot we hit, where it went on the course, how far it went, how far it was from our target, the whole thing. And we get. Years worth of data because of the laser measurements.
19:11 Speaker 01 Science!
19:13 Speaker 00 He's pushing all these buttons now. That's a happy face, by the way.
19:18 Speaker 01 Science! All right, so before we take a break, maybe you can break down just Doppler.
19:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, we can. We've spent a minute on that. People know the word, but I don't think they always feel it.
19:27 Speaker 01 And really, it's just like, you know, you hear a Doppler and you're like, there must be a hurricane or a storm coming.
19:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, something's in motion.
19:32 Speaker 01 Something's in motion, is it? But what is Doppler?
19:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There was a German fellow named Christian Doppler, who suspected that sound changed depending on whether an object was moving towards you or away from you. And he did experiments with trains. This is in the 19th century. And a train whistle comes towards you, he noticed that the pitch was higher than that very same train whistle as it receded from you. So in the modern version of that, we think of cars. If you're standing adjacent to a freeway and a car's coming towards you, it goes "Mmmmm."
20:05 Speaker 01 And in New York, you hear "F you!" right afterwards.
20:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, there's no Doppler at all because nobody's moving in any traffic. We're in LA on the 405. Leave the Doppler at home. So we know about this frequency change. And so it turns out it is an exact relationship between how much the frequency changes and the speed of the thing coming towards you or moving away. It's an exact, it's a clean, it's a clean algebra 101 formula.
20:33 Speaker 01 Clean ratio.
20:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right. So if it's going twice as fast, it has twice the pitch coming towards you, the frequency of the pitch. So, so now, once you have something that can reflect that signal back to you, you have to choose the kind of light that would do that. Not all things will reflect a signal back to you in that way. So, by the way, it works with any wave. So it'll work with the sound waves on the train and it works with the light waves. And in this case, it would be microwaves or if you had some other kind of laser, optical laser, it would work for any kind of light. Light travels in waves. But you need to know the speed of that wave in order to do this calculation. And in our case, it's the speed of light in air, which is slightly less than the speed of light.
21:10 Speaker 01 In a vacuum.
21:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a simple formula. Now, you got machines. You plug it into the coding of the machine and now he can sit there and not have to even know what the formula looks like and his iPad is telling him as he stands there on the green.
21:24 Speaker 00 Okay, that was your Doppler Minute brought to you by Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson. And you may have had a bit of a bonus on that minute, but there you go. We'll take a break. Jeff Ogilvy, pleasure, absolute pleasure.
21:36 Speaker 02 Thanks for joining us.
21:37 Speaker 01 I hope we can get you back, man. You are really cool to talk to.
21:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was fun.
21:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just a quick thing, the putting green, that's actually real grass?
21:44 Speaker 02 Real grass.
21:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because I've never seen grass that looks like putting green grass.
21:47 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
21:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You guys must genetically engineer that stuff.
21:51 Speaker 02 Well, believe it or not, we do. I think maybe we should come back and talk about it.
21:54 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
21:55 Speaker 00 You're on, absolutely on. We'll get a greenskeeper in. We're going to take that break. The good doctor will be with us and Chuck will have thoughts on balls when we get back.
22:02 Speaker 01 You know it.
22:06 Speaker 00 Welcome back to Playing with Science. This, of course, is our look at golf. We've had to lose the services of Jeff Ogilvy. Apparently he's got to practise. They're going to be world number four and have to practise. You've already nailed it, dude. Anyway, right. The good doctor Neil deGrasse Tyson's still with us.
22:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, you know, I've never actually played golf, so I'm happy to help out where the physics applies, but you can't come to me for expertise here in the golf. So here's how much I don't play golf. You ready? People ask me, am I an atheist? And I said, I'm really, so if you look at it, I'm closer to an agnostic, but I don't even like the word atheist because it's a word that describes what you're not. And why should there be a word to describe what you're not? And my example there has been, there's no word for me as someone who does not play golf. Are there words for non-golfers? Yeah, it's called black.
23:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Plus Tiger didn't say he was black. He was some other thing.
23:15 Speaker 01 Cobble nation.
23:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cobble, whatever. Right, right, right. Thai, whatever. Thai cocktails is what that was. So golf was always my go-to reference for the statement that there are no words that says you don't play golf.
23:29 Speaker 01 That's, that's actually really cool.
23:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
23:31 Speaker 01 I like the...
23:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, I don't want words describing... What I don't do. Right. Give me words to describe. What I am. What I do. And what I do. Yeah.
23:38 Speaker 00 Let's get to one of your tweets.
23:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? About golf.
23:42 Speaker 00 About golf.
23:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't remember tweeting about golf. How deep, how deep are you digging here in the, in the Twitter archives?
23:48 Speaker 00 Well, let's just, let's just say we've been down the mine and we've come up with golfers.
23:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, when, when was this? That's April two thousand thirteen. Oh, okay. This is early, uh, yeah, this is.
24:01 Speaker 00 Okay, April two thousand thirteen.
24:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tweet.
24:04 Speaker 00 Early Tyson tweet. Golfers want silence when hitting stationary balls at their feet. Baseball batters in screaming crowds hit ninety mile an hour fastballs. Discuss.
24:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was just an observation, you know, I wasn't.
24:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, but no, I, obviously the psychology, the, the, the sort of hitting of a ball in the mind and being able to, well, I can't do it because everyone's talking.
24:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, I, I think it's, I think it's just tradition in the sport. I don't see any actual reason why a golfer shouldn't be able to concentrate regardless of noise level. If you speak to basketball players in the final seconds who have to hit a free throw and crowds are screaming and the crowd behind the backboard.
24:52 Speaker 00 Is waving things.
24:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Waving things that are specifically designed to distract it. If you ask those players, they say everything gets zoned out. Right. And it's just me, the ball and the basket. Nice. And we have the power to do this. It's, it's, you know, selective attention directing. And I use that with my children all the time. We're very good at that. I'm so good at that. It's attenuating for, uh, uh, things that would otherwise distract your attention.
25:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
25:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, so in golf, they have no tradition of doing that. Right. And therefore they have no such ability to pull that off unless we slowly sort of ease it in.
25:29 Speaker 00 Is golf unique in the sense that if it's a, if it's a tennis match, you've got an opponent? Uh, if it's a baseball batter, you pitch a hitter. Golfer, it's you, a ball, a stick, a hole. And there's no one else involved. It's all about you.
25:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there aren't other sports like that, like, like in, in, uh, in, in the moment.
25:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
25:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's the field events of track and field. It's just really just you. There's not someone directly against you.
25:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. Singular sports, singular performance sports.
25:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
25:57 Speaker 01 But track and field, like you said, also screaming, lights of, you know, yeah, cheering on.
26:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
26:03 Speaker 01 Uh, and, uh, the funny thing is that, uh, like in football playoffs, the coaches actually pipe in crowd noise if you're in the away team. So you're practicing at home and they turn the stadium speakers up as loud as they can go.
26:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To distract them.
26:23 Speaker 01 To distract the players during practice in hopes that their mind will, uh, become acclimated to the distraction and it will no longer be a distraction.
26:32 Speaker 00 It's weird if you're playing and there's nobody there or like there's no, uh, didn't the NBA do some, a couple of games earlier in the year?
26:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah. With, with no crowd.
26:41 Speaker 00 With no, with no music, no background music.
26:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, I thought, no, there was no, there was an empty stadium.
26:46 Speaker 01 NFL, and it was an NFL game because of, was it a storm or what was it? I can't remember.
26:50 Speaker 00 No, the NBA played games without any music. It's sort of da, da, da. None of that happened.
26:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
26:56 Speaker 01 For the entire game?
26:57 Speaker 00 Yeah.
26:57 Speaker 01 And did it have an effect on the players?
26:59 Speaker 00 No, it freaked me out. Watching that was weird.
27:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He needs the music.
27:03 Speaker 01 That is great.
27:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But, but, but in tennis, another game where silence is tradition, you know, is a tradition. We always hear, quiet, please.
27:11 Speaker 01 Quiet, please.
27:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Quiet, please.
27:13 Speaker 01 And I'm just like, who are you telling me to be quiet? No, not the boss of me. And then security gets involved. It's just awful.
27:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So, so I think it's just tradition, but it's fun to sort of make fun of that difference. That's all. It was a playful tool.
27:24 Speaker 00 No, no, I, I get it, but it does, it, but it does, it sparks a debate.
27:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The 90 mile an hour fastball is thrown with the full intent of you not hitting it.
27:32 Speaker 01 Right.
27:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not only in speed, but in movement.
27:34 Speaker 01 In movement.
27:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. So.
27:35 Speaker 00 It is apparently the hardest thing.
27:39 Speaker 00 To.
27:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do in sports.
27:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, in elite sports.
27:41 Speaker 01 And now, you know, I was thinking about that.
27:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that's a quantifiable statement.
27:44 Speaker 01 I was about to say.
27:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know this.
27:45 Speaker 01 Two things. One, you just sparked in me when you were talking about tennis. Golf and tennis, both country club sports.
27:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
27:55 Speaker 01 And so therefore.
27:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exclusive membership sports.
27:58 Speaker 01 Membership sports. And so I'm sure traditionally it was played in pretty much silence. So when it becomes competitive, they continue that tradition because that's how the game is played.
28:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Even though now there's a thousands of people.
28:10 Speaker 01 Even now, there's thousands of people as a spectator.
28:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Along as spectators along the green.
28:13 Speaker 00 Yeah, you play you play in front of grandstands.
28:16 Speaker 01 Right.
28:16 Speaker 00 On a golf course, on the big majors. So, yeah, they've they're they're saying, quiet, please, whilst selling tickets in the tens of thousands.
28:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, that's funny.
28:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The reason why hitting a baseball, we know, is the hardest thing to do in sports is because the best hitters successfully put the ball where it's not fielded.
28:36 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Only a third of the time.
28:38 Speaker 01 Right.
28:38 Speaker 00 So if I come out with a point three average, I'm a superstar.
28:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct. You're in you are in you are you are in the Hall of Fame and people write whole articles about you.
28:48 Speaker 00 I like this.
28:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whereas I don't there's not clear that there's any other sport where if you had a a sixty seven percent failure rate, that you would be considered a success.
28:56 Speaker 01 So now, check this out. Now that you say that, golf, we say the hardest thing to do is hit a baseball, a nine mile fastball, but how about a hole in one? So if you're on a par three course, that means that you can get a hole in one.
29:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's possible.
29:11 Speaker 01 That is a possible shot.
29:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, the ball's not so far away that it's not in your in out of reach.
29:15 Speaker 01 Right. Which means you can get on the green and run, which means if you place the ball on the green in one properly, you could get a roll to get a hole in one.
29:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh.
29:23 Speaker 01 So how often does a hole in one happen in golf? And maybe that's the hardest thing to do.
29:27 Speaker 00 It happens. No, it happens a lot more than.
29:30 Speaker 01 Than than a home run?
29:32 Speaker 00 Maybe not a home run, but it does happen, yeah.
29:35 Speaker 01 But they say the hardest thing to do in sports is to hit a home run.
29:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, no.
29:41 Speaker 00 No, it's the fastball, isn't it?
29:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, the hardest thing to do in sports is to pitch a perfect game. So let's just get that straight.
29:46 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
29:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What fraction of all games are perfect games? If that's what you're talking about.
29:51 Speaker 01 That's what I'm talking about.
29:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is like the mini school near zero fraction.
29:54 Speaker 01 Okay.
29:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so, uh, uh, so you are right. A hole in one is rarer for a golfer than a home run is for a batter. For any kind of slugger. Right, right, right. So I'll give you that.
30:06 Speaker 01 All right.
30:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A hole in one is going to be rarer.
30:08 Speaker 01 Well, if you're giving it, I'm taking it.
30:12 Speaker 00 Do you advocate noise whilst putting to close out a major? You're in Augusta. You've got, you've got a six foot putt. That's you banking seven, possibly eight figures in your bank. And you, you lot, shut up. I'm at work here. This is worth a lot of money.
30:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I sometimes fantasize, like if I'm trying to solve some grand equation, that there's.
30:34 Speaker 00 You fantasize about equations. You fantasize about equations.
30:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's up with the commentator, right?
30:41 Speaker 01 He could go all the way.
30:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's, he's got three lines left, we think. And he's there. He's almost there. Da da da da, Q E D. He's done it. And then there's a, so it's just kind of. Who was it? There was a classical music comedian. Uh, was it Victor Borga?
30:59 Speaker 00 Victor Borga. It could well be. Yeah, yeah, the pianist, yeah.
31:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, he's the one who had a concert where there were announcers describing the classical music performance the way sportscasters. So, so they say, and they're like eating during the thing. They say, you know, this tuba player, they traded him for the other guy for this. And then there's a trumpet that.
31:20 Speaker 01 You know, the Philly Pops brought in this oboe player. That's funny.
31:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And one of them, and a trumpet hits a wrong note.
31:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
31:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's his third mess up this year. We probably won't see him in the next performance. You know, it was, it was hilarious.
31:33 Speaker 01 That's a brilliant pit.
31:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Brilliant pit.
31:35 Speaker 01 It's pretty cool, man. Oh, man, we are out of time, guys.
31:38 Speaker 00 We are. We have learned one thing. Neil fantasizes about equations.
31:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, one of more than one thing I fantasize about.
31:45 Speaker 00 That's different to me, but there we are.
31:47 Speaker 01 I've learned something. I want golf to change so that people can actually heckle people while they're putting. That would be awesome.
31:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You suck, McElroy, and your wife is sleeping with your brother.
31:58 Speaker 01 Like, that would be amazing. I'm sorry, that's how I heckle.
32:02 Speaker 00 Oh, okay.
32:03 Speaker 01 I probably went too far. Okay.
32:05 Speaker 00 May have done. Right, that's it for Playing with Science. Hope you've enjoyed it and, uh, thank you.
32:10 Speaker 01 Thank you.
32:10 Speaker 00 To Neil deGrasse Tyson once again, and our new good friend.
32:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Always happy to help out.
32:15 Speaker 00 Jeff Ogilvy. So that's it. Hope you've enjoyed it and we look forward to your company soon.
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