Football and Physics
This weekend the Bundesliga starts the new season. Time to take a quick look at the connection between football and physics. When Brazilian Roberto Carlos scored an unbelievable goal with his left outerrist from 35 metres in 1997, the football world wondered whether this was happening with the right things. Was there a higher power in the game? God's foot cooked? A riddle that had to be solved.

Exact science for the green lawn
This hit has left our French neighbours no peace, and so French physicists have revealed the secret last year, as reported by Spiegel Online, among others. In the New Journals of Physics the scientists explain very precisely how this hit came about.

The decisive factors were the long goal distance, the hard shot from Roberto Carlos and the perfect ball rotation. This, in turn, was caused by the cut shot, which steered the ball at high speed to a spiral trajectory on its way to the goal. The experts call this the Magnus effect. The great distance from the goal then caused the ball's airspeed to gradually decrease, allowing the rotation to take over the sceptre over the direction of flight. This led to the left-hand bend towards the goal at the end of the flight path.

From free kick to free angle
Now, of course, you are wondering what this has to do with grinding and grinding machines? Not so much at first glance. But when I look at the sometimes extremely complex workpieces that our customers grind to the µm on our machines, there is a lot of mathematics and physics involved in the development of the grinding process. Yes, and then the jump from the free angle to the free kick is only minimal.

Machining of a large hobbing cutter

www.youtube.com/watch

So if you want to machine a complex workpiece such as such a beautiful hob, write to our software expert Wolfram Hermle. Because the soccer prodigy Roberto Carlos will certainly not be able to help you.

It's not only important to be on the spot, but also on the grinding machine!

We wish you nice summer days
Dirk Wember