Wednesday, June 30, 2010

sixty symbols: testing the jabulani

there has been a bit of fuss about the official world cup ball, the jabulani, developed by adidas especially for the world cup. so for sixty symbols, brady decided to let scientists tackle the controversy behind the jabulani in a couple fun videos.

WARNING: these videos show scientists playing football! we actually play five-a-side once a week, but that might not be evident from the highlights shown here ;)



i was pretty excited to play with the jabulani and overall i was impressed by the quality. i lack the ability to purposely spin the ball in all sorts of directions so i cant comment about that aspect of the jabulani's performance, but one thing i noticed is that it bounces a lot higher than the one i'm used to playing with. maybe its a similar thing to tennis - when you use new balls they are really bouncy! brady got annoyed that we kept asking him about the air pressure and whether he filled the ball too much! ha!

the jabulani also makes an incredibly awesome echo sound when you strike it!

in addition to the fabulous football footage shown in the video above, brady put together a bonus video of our highly-competitive penalty shoot-out! i missed my penalty, but got to try out a vuvuzela!! i have no idea how people can blow those things for 90 minutes. previous experience playing brass instruments is a big plus!

3 comments:

~PakKaramu~ said...

Pak Karamu visiting your blog

Chris said...

So it's smoother and bouncier? Is that the takeaway message?

Unknown said...

best advice for playing goal against not so great players: do NOT guess, just wait until the ball is kicked and THEN react. most of the players just aren't good enough that you increase your odds by guessing.