Football

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The Football takes readers on an entertaining and fact-filled exploration of the mathematical secrets of the most popular spherical object on the planet. The football is familiar to billions of fans across the globe, but how many really look at it? Do footballs all have the same shape? Spoiler: not exactly. How does their shape affect how they play? With tienne Ghys as our guide, we discover why ballistics, friction, and air flow are key to scoring goals-and why the football is a mathematical problem that engineers are still trying to solve.

Ghys begins with the classic Telstar ball used in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Its twelve black pentagons and twenty white hexagons are what most of us picture when we think of the sport. Following the story through successive World Cups, he shows how engineers constantly challenge themselves to reinvent the ball, aiming for a perfect sphere while accounting for manufacturing requirements and aerodynamics. Along the way, Ghys introduces us to the mathematics of Platonic solids, symmetries, polyhedra, turbulence, roughness, drag, and spin. He paints engaging portraits of the engineers and sports insiders who study and apply these phenomena and explains how the skills of players factor into how the ball behaves, whether the game is being played in stadiums, schoolyards, or backyards.

Featuring a wealth of color illustrations, The Football blends a lively narrative with insights from a world-renowned geometer to tell a mathematical story unlike any other.

'Erudite and whimsical...A kick for fans and nonfans alike.' Kirkus

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Hardback
ISBN13: 9780691263120
Published: August 2025

Number of pages: 136
Width: 140 mm
Height: 203 mm
Depth: not specified

Publisher: Princeton University Press