Football featuring Iloa Jordan Kaio

On Sunday night I went to my (paternal) grandparents's house for dinner, a weekly tradition.  I'll be honest – by then I had completely forgotten about our blog assignment.  I guess everything worked out well though, because I took some pictures of my little cousin, Iloa, to text to my sister, Ming.  Since she left for college Ming has missed Iloa, and when he came in the football uniform his father bought him, I had to show her what she was now absent from.  When I was later looking back and trying to remember anything physics related that I witnessed this weekend, these pictures immediately came to mind.  Not only would the pictures provide an excellent example of the kinetic force equation, but I could also challenge Mr. Heyler for cutest family photo of the week.

As you can see in the above picture, Iloa is not the biggest football player.  Let's say he weighs 25 pounds, about 111 Newtons.  This makes him roughly one-tenth the weight of the average NFL player who weighs about 250 pounds (1112 Newtons).
The Kinetic Energy equation states that KE = 1/2(m)(v)^2.  Therefore if Iloa wants to hit as hard as professional football player, he needs to run faster than the NFL player by a factor of √(10):

v = velocity of NFL player, i = velocity of Iloa

KE of NFL player = KE of Iloa
1/2(m)v^2 = 1/2(m/10)i^2
10v^2 = i^2
i = √(10)v

While the mass of the NFL player is a full ten times the mass of Iloa, Iloa only needs to multiply his speed by about 3.2.  This comparison shows that changes in velocity produce a far more pronounced effect on the resultant kinetic energy than changes in mass.






This is a picture of Iloa making an angry-face: