And researching breathable water isn’t expensive.
Nor is researching a containment device for said… thing.
You think about this idea for more than 4.8 seconds and tell me why >:(
uh… they have safety stuff for it?
I’m gonna say because you would have to alter some law of physics to achieve what Steve said. Or because it would take a bitchin’ amount of energy to maintain for any period of time.
Well, it’d be a bit more practical than water-breathing technology, and something dense enough not to float, but light enough not to cause problems in terms of muscular strength.
Giant sphere of water: Sure, easily doable. Costly, but you have all those giant indoor aquariums, I don’t see why you couldn’t shape one in the form of a globe.
Breathing underwater: No. Even if the rounds were two minutes, you’re depriving yourself of oxygen and causing physical harm, brain cells dying, etc. You’d have to equip the players with a small non-obstructing oxygen tank and mask. Lungs don’t do well dealing with anything other than gasseous substances, as we’ve all come to learn.
Ball movement: Fill the ball with a highly pressurized gas that is released when the ball is struck (with a hand or foot). The amount of gas released would be proportional to how hard it is struck, and it would determine the speed and distance the ball would travel. Preventing the ball from running out of gas would be the biggest challenge to overcome.
Movement issues: Water is rather dense and restricts movement considerably. If someone can throw a baseball 100mph, and you put them underwater, I think they’d be lucky to reach half that speed immediately after the ball leaves the hand. It would make for a rather boring sport. If you lowered the density of the fluid the game is played in to allow for quicker movement, the players would then have to extend much more energy keeping themselves afloat. I guess that could be remedied by gas-filled equipment of some sort.
Biggest problem: It’s possible, but there would be a lot of funding needed to develop the game and equipment, and to find ways to keep it safe, fast paced and entertaining. And then there’s no guarantee people would want to play or more importantly, pay money to watch. Nobody would be willing to take such a risk with their money.
I believe this to be an intriguing idea, and having a background in the basics of physics and chemistry, I believe it a possibility. The oxygenation problem can be handled by filling the pool with a specific concentration of perfluorooctylbromide (CF3)(6CF2)(CF2Br) of (C8F17Br) depending on how you like it. This molecule, related closely to teflon, carries oxygen nearly as freely as common air does. It is commonly used to provide concentrated oxygen to patients. One would have to be careful about how oxygenated the fluid is, as not to chemically “burn” the tissue of the players lungs. So the tank would need a balance of dissolved gasses similar to that of our everyday troposphere.
The real problem, I believe, is the ball. The force of drag on an object, as you can find in any of your textbooks, or online depending on how much you walking you want to make your fingers do, is defined by the function:
D=Cdrho[(V^2)/2]*A
where,
Cd= constant of complex dependencies, aka drag coefficient, generally determined experimentally (includes form drag, skin friction drag, wave drag, and induced drag components)
rho=the density of the fluid
V = velocity of the object at the instant of calculation
A = area presented to the fluid (this depends on the inclination of the body to the fluid’s flow)
now, the area presented to the fluid of course can be thought of several different ways, however, since the measured coefficient is generally calculated by measuring the actual drag force on the object and its reference area and performing the expected divisions to yield the desired variable, we can really choose any bloody area we desire, as long as we keep it constant throughout our equations. However, in this case it seems reasonable to think of the area as that presented perpendicular to the flow of the fluid. Effectively this means the crossectional area of the great circle of the ball. So we end up with A = pi*(R^2)
However you can see the real issue is the velocity of the ball, the faster you attempt to throw, kick, headbut your object, the greater the force against you becomes.
Therefore the amount of energy required to bring the ball up to 100 km/h is a damn imposibility for a human using a ball of typical material. You can get this by taking
F=MA+D (M is mass of Blitzball, D is drag)
A=(F-D)/M
Int A dt = V
=Int A dt = 100km/h
=Int (F-D)/M = 100 km/h
=(F-D)*t/M=100km/h
say you want to accelerate the ball in 3 to 4 sec (3/3600 to 4/3600 hrs), then you can acquire the force by rearranging the terms {[(100km/h)*M]/t}+D
so as you can see, the force is already enormous, but just to prove it further, the energy required is
W = int F ds ( the integral of force over distance)
so, lets say our player has an arm 2 ft long, not unreasonalbe, then the arc length swept out by the circle of his throw is of course
s = 2pi2ftangle/(2pi radians)
so assuming he takes about 2*pi/3 radians, 120 degrees to make his throw, then the energy required , since we assume the pool will be exerting force perpendicular to any direction we attempt to accelerate the ball, (this way we do not have to consider the path integral) we get that the energy required is
W=[2 ft * 2*pi / 3] * F
= [2 ft * 2*pi / 3] * {[(100km/h)*M]/t}+D
=[2 ft * 2pi / 3] * {[(100km/h)M]/t} + Cdrho[(V^2)/2]*A
=[2 ft * 2pi / 3] * {[(100km/h)M]/t} + Cdrho[(V^2)/2]pi(r^2)
which, when calculated, is F*$%#ing huge…
However, I do not see this as an imposible obsticle, in fact I have an idea to reduce the drag of the ball, which may intrigue a few of you…
If you create a ball which has silicon micro or nanofibers coating the surface, when you apply a charge, the hairs should stand up, reducing the area exposed to the friction of the fluid severely, creating a very effective boundary layer, thereby distorting the appearant “shape” of the ball.
Well, I have to head off to bed, as it is incredibly late and I’m headed to Canada in the morning… incredibly long drive and such…
i went to a fight and a blitzball game broke out!
Besides the excessive violence in what is viewed as a peaceful sport to forget the violent times they live in, and that whole “impossible to do” thing, nobody mentioned the most scientifically impractical factor of Blitzball. How people behind you can catch the ball you threw in front of you.
haha its funny this post, me and my mate use to copy the different swims of players when we got bored at the pool, like wakka and tidus, how they swim differently, it was quite funny, of coarse the swim style tidus uses works better underwater in real life than the style wakka uses
that falls under the category of “impossible to do” although it could technically have it’s own category. that’s kind of funny though.