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Happy midweek. ☀️
The FIFA World Cup kicks off in 37 hours, and I have already reached the stage where I’m reading research papers about footballs. This year’s Adidas match ball has deep grooves, a kind of technology that will make its flight path more predictable. Researchers who tested it in wind tunnels say long-range shots might not travel quite as far as they did with previous World Cup balls.
The ball also needs to be charged before every match because it contains a sensor that tracks touches, spin, and movement in real time. We started with a leather ball and somehow ended up with a rechargeable data-collection device that occasionally gets kicked into the top corner.
