HeadSmart Labs DeflateGate Study
HeadSmart Labs is raising money through our “Funding The Truth” campaign to perform follow-up research regarding DeflateGate. HeadSmart Labs performed the first DeflateGate laboratory experiments back in January and found that the pressure of footballs in the AFC championship game could have changed by 1.95 PSI from weather conditions alone. These findings suggest that the pressure change in the Patriots’ footballs could be from natural causes alone. To read the full report: http://www.headsmartlabs.com/#in-the-news
The study was published in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/sports/football/deflation-experiments-show-patriots-may-have-science-on-their-side-after-all.html?_r=0
The NFL has recently released the Wells and Exponent reports which came to the conclusion that it was probably not possible, due to weather conditions alone, to achieve the pressure drops measured in the Patriots’ footballs at halftime.
These findings are significantly different from what was found in the initial HeadSmart Labs study:
- In our initial study we dampened the footballs more than in the study done by Wells/Exponent.
- We recorded a 0.7 PSI drop from wetting the footballs whereas the Wells/Exponent study only saw a 0.1 PSI drop from wetting the footballs.
In our initial study, we rotated the footballs in a tub of water and wiped them with a damp cloth. We believe this level of dampness better replicates the conditions that the footballs may have been exposed to during the first half of the AFC Championship game. In the Wells/Exponent report they state that they used a “hand held spray bottle” to wet the footballs. We hypothesize that these different methods for applying wetness explain the conflicting findings between the HeadSmart Labs report and the Wells/Exponent report.
Our study has shown that if footballs are sufficiently wet, the footballs will experience a greater drop in pressure than was achieved in the Wells/Exponent report.
We are raising funds to pursue further scientific research to explain in detail the findings from our initial study. With your funding, we will deliver further findings to support our initial study which showed that the level of wetness in a football can change it's pressure more than was found in the Wells/Exponent report.
We plan to present our findings to the NFL. Any additional funds that are raised in the “Funding The Truth” campaign will go towards HeadSmart Labs’ ongoing football helmet safety research.
Watch the video from our initial study:
