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Dr. John Eric Goff, a physics professor from Lynchburg College, is a name you
may have seen recently, particularly if you have been following the World Cup.
His recent research with the new and more aerodynamically stable “Brazuca”
soccer ball has turned Goff into one of the most respected and oft-cited experts
in the 2014 World Cup media coverage. Goff’s first book, Gold Medal
Physics: The Science of Sports, covers several great sports moments.
professor spotlight
by Rachel James Clevenger
Lynchburg College and The Physics of Sports
Among other explorations of top athletes, Goff deconstructs Doug
Flutie’s 1984 “Hail Mary” pass, Lance Armstrong’s accomplishments,
the 1984 and 1988 diving from Greg Louganis that brought home
gold, Katarina Witt’s skill on the ice, and David Beckham’s “banana
kicks.” At one point, Goff’s plan was to play minor league professional
baseball. He quips that he may be “one of the few people who chose
physics because something else was too hard.” However, his love of
sports followed him into that academic concentration, allowing some
remarkable work. He completed post docs at Kenyon and Oberlin and
then landed at Lynchburg where he’s been since 2002.
Making Room for Student Interests
Goff’s approach to research is that it should be collaborative—and
that works both ways. He is inspired by his students’ interests as often
as they are inspired by Goff’s own. Though there is less pressure to
constantly publish at Lynchburg than some faculty members face at
other institutions, Goff shares, “I don’t feel I can function as a teacher
if I’m not an active researcher.”
Because he and his colleagues recognize their department is fairly
small, they feel even more pressure to find a way to serve all of those
students’ interests by pairing them with the best faculty mentor
available, knowing that mentor will find a way to tailor projects that
will help students become active participants in their own learning.
They are also a faculty made up of people who have no fear of
exploring the new territories that interest their charges. He notes that
they couldn’t just offer three options for a student to choose from,
when they were also challenging students to be creative thinkers. He
adds, “If a student is interested in something, we better find a way to
do something with that student.” That’s why his own mentoring of
students is certainly not limited to questions of sports physics; he’s
worked recently on an astrophysics project, an analysis of protein
folding in two dimensions, and magnetic spins systems.
Turning Student Projects into Publications
In his early years at Lynchburg, Goff worked with Brandon Cook in
his Computational Physics course; Cook was interested in soccer and
intrigued with the idea, in particular, of “parameter space of successful
soccer kicks.” Cook explains that the initial concepts for their work
were developed while Cook was taking Goff’s course and concurrently
playing on the LC varsity soccer team. When he considered free kicks,
particularly the “possibility of the trajectory to curve,” Cook wondered
if calculating those kick trajectories would be possible. He and Goff
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developed the model and the probabilities of a “successful” kick based
on a variety of criteria, from positions of the goalkeeper and defender,
as well as the position of the ball, to the kick’s velocity and the point
of contact with the ball.
When he submitted their findings to the American Journal of Physics,
Goff received a rejection with the note that the topic would be unlikely
to be of broad interest. Though that was disappointing for a moment,
he told himself, “This paper is going to be published somewhere.”
Very soon thereafter, he heard from the European Journal of Physics.
Goff shares, “Published just before the 2006 World Cup, our paper
was downloaded more times than 90% of the papers published in
the journal.” Interestingly, the paper is also the first Wikipedia entry
found under “Parameter Space.” That same work also took him on a
sabbatical to England for 2008 and 2009. Not surprisingly, Goff refers
to the initial rejection by the American Journal of Physics as “the best
thing that has ever happened in my publishing career.”
Cook is now in his second year of an NSF CI TraCS postdoctoral
fellowship (NSF Fellowship for Transformative Computational Science
using CyberInfrastructure) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After
his work with Goff, Cook earned his PhD in physics from Vanderbilt
University. He explains that his current project is focused on solving
structural problems for our next-gen super computers. Cook believes
that working with Goff and having the opportunity to be published
as such a young student is why he became interested in pursuing an
academic career.
Brian Ramsey worked with Goff for two summers, after Goff secured
funding from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges; both
summers were spent modeling the Tour de France, and their findings
were published just this year in the Journal of Sports Engineering and
Technology. Ramsey notes that working with Goff offered a firsthand
look at “the kind of performance typically expected of those who
are in the line of work which I wish to pursue,” and he was beyond
delighted to be published. Ramsey explains that his primary efforts
were focused on learning the Mathematica software—which he used
to create his model—learning the physical laws of cyclists in motion,
and gathering data to describe the cyclists’ tracks. He found Goff
to have both “amazing familiarity” with his subject material and
“ample hours of availability for helping students.” He even remembers
that he received immediate responses to emails he sent Goff around
midnight. He notes, “It’s clear to me that Dr. Goff is determined to see
his students succeed both in the classroom as well as in their general
intellectual pursuits.”
The Fun Side of Research
Hunter Smith has been working at Harris Corporation for the
past three years, in the RF Communications division. He still
finds it “unbelievable” that his work with Goff lead to such
remarkable opportunities, particularly being published while still an
undergraduate student. He adds that the research was enjoyable as
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well. Because Smith was already a soccer player and a soccer fan,
Goff ’s leadership taught him a new way to appreciate a game he
already loved. Smith notes, “Dr. Goff helped me understand how
soccer works from a physics point of view and how the evolution of
the ball has much more of an impact on the game than your average
spectator realizes.”
What prompted their collaborative project was Smith facing his
senior year without having a firm idea for a research plan, which
is required of every science student at LC. While on sabbatical in
England, Goff pitched Smith possible research opportunities, and
Smith soon realized further exploration of soccer was on the horizon
for both of them. Smith analyzed videos Goff sent from England—
soccer balls shot from a launcher—to analyze ways the ball’s stitching
impacted movement based on varying angles of boundary-layer
separation.
Smith adds that he finds it impossible to express his gratitude and
respect for Goff. He shares, “Through physics, he taught me how to
approach and solve a problem, mathematically and logically. These
methods of teaching have given me the ability to excel in my career
or any career I choose.” He also praises Goff for refusing to ever give
a student the answer—though he admits that first-year students may
be incredibly frustrated by that stance—because Goff is focused on
the student finding the answer. Smith adds that this feeling of “selfaccomplishment a student feels when they have figured ‘it’ out” is one
of Goff’s greatest gifts as an educator.
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Modeling the Tour de France
Ben Hannas was Goff’s first sports physics student at Lynchburg. As
part of their work in Goff’s Computational Physics course, Hannas
modeled one stage of the Tour de France. Later, after Hannas
graduated, they developed a project that modeled the entire race.
Hannas is now at Ecotope, focusing on consulting and design—as
well as energy efficiency research, primarily in the residential housing
sector. Hannas, like Smith, recalls how enjoyable he found his
research with Goff. When he was given the option to choose any final
project he found interesting, Hannas—as a cyclist and runner—was
interested in studying the Tour de France. He adds, “It was a lot of
fun to bring together my outside hobbies and my academic interests.
I even remember setting up a camera of myself on a bike inside my
dorm room to try to calculate the cross-sectional area of a cyclist.”
Though he was pleased at the time by how much everyone enjoyed
his presentation, he had never imagined that project leading to a
publication.
Hannas believes Goff’s “genuine interest in teaching” is one of the
most admirable aspects of Goff’s mentoring. He adds, “He wanted all
of us to get as much out of the classes as we could, and he was willing
to put in a lot of effort himself to make it happen.” He also shares that
Goff was exceptional at blending the lab and class work while also
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A Spirit of Inquiry
There’s no doubt Goff’s students feel both prepared to tackle
challenges and grateful for the chance they were given to be attached
to a publication so early in their schooling. Certainly, they recognize
the benefits gained from working with a professor who found a way
to develop meaningful, exciting projects that were based on their
own interests. Goff is a firm believer that “the best scientists in the
world are children.” He enjoys speaking to elementary-aged children,
in particular, because “they don’t worry about what it sounds like to
ask a question.” Additionally, he believes many older students have
been trained in high school to sit passively and absorb knowledge, he
focuses on helping his own students relearn that spirit of inquiry—to
“ask questions and to make discoveries.” What happens from there is
awe-inspiring.
teaching his students “how to communicate science.” Hannas knows
that these experiences prepared him for presenting real-world projects, Dr. Goff’s blog, which attracts traffic from over 127 countries, offers
and he finds himself reusing those same tools now when he researches, fascinating commentary on the World Cup and the Tour de France.
interprets, and then communicates his findings.
Learn more at http://johnericgoff.blogspot.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Rachel James Clevenger, editor of PUPN MAG, earned her B.A. and M.Ed. degrees from Mississippi College. After
finishing her PhD in Composition and Rhetoric, she taught and served as the University Writing Center director for Birmingham Southern
College and University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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