Before Super Bowl, do the math

MILFORD — “Sports is science,” says Dingman-Delaware Middle School teacher Mark Alderfer.

He sees the upcoming Super Bowl as a real-life physics lesson waiting to happen.

“Students don’t realize that they already know this stuff,” Alderfer said about such concepts as Newton’s Laws, momentum, force, and energy. “They just call it a pass in football or a tackle. It’s my job to show them how science relates.”

And show them, he does. In a typical class period, students must critically think through questions about the science behind how everyday things work.

“Like they know that a hot air balloon rises, but they don’t necessarily understand why,” Alderfer said.

And his classroom is set up so that he can demonstrate most physics concepts, not only as they apply to the lesson, but as students generate spontaneous questions as a result of thinking about how to answer the original question. In football, for example, should you speed up or slow down to tackle? And the most important question: Why?

So as Peyton Manning gets ready to face-off against Cam Newton in Super Bowl 50, consider, with Alderfer’s students, “Why don’t you throw a bowling ball overhand?” — and how the original Newton, Sir Isaac’s second law F=MA (force = mass x acceleration), will greatly affect the outcome of what is sure to be one of the most watched sporting events in history.