Shuttlecocks, Round Balls and the Size of Sports Fields

By John Considine

Brendan Kennelly (NUIG) sent me this link to a physics blog post on the size of sports fields.  It is based on a recent New Journal of Physics article of the same name written by Baptiste Darbois Texier and colleagues.  The blog piece is by Lisa Zyga.

A central point in the article is that the distance the ball (or shuttlecock) travels seems to determine the size of the sports arena.  The authors give the example of a game where a balloon is knocked over a net as in volleyball.  They point out that the effective length of the arena is 3 meters because that is how far the balloon will travel no matter how hard it is struck.  They note how the there is a clustering around the solid black line in Figure 2 below.  In other words, the length of sports field is around the maximum length the ball will travel.  They note that the two outlier games of Squash and Jai Alai (denoted with red squares) have walls that keep the ball in play.

The authors also examine how fast the ball covers the length of the sports field (if travelling at maximum speed).  They note that there is clear classification of ball games (badminton is different).  There are ball games that require precision & reflex actions.  These are located in the lower left-side of Figure 3.  Then there are games that take more than one movement of the ball to get them the full length of the field.  These tend to be team games that involve strategy on how to move the ball.  They also tend to have a target at the end of the field or arena.  These are located in the upper right-side of Figure 3.