World cup fever has taken us all. During popular games, our co-working space typically filled with startups is a wasteland: the computer screens are blank, the seats are empty and the ideas are on hold. Everyone surrounds the large screen television watching 22 men kick a ball around. At a lull during the action, my mind started to wander, and I started to think about penalty kicks. Watching some of the games where penalty kicks determined the outcome, I realized how impossible the odds were for the goalie. The ball was going to the left but the goalie jumped to the right. Looking at the physics of penalty kicks it started to make more sense. The kick is from 12 yards away. The goal is 24 feet wide by 8 feet tall or 192 square feet. The ball typically moves at 70-80 mph reaching the goal line in 500 milliseconds. A goalie can get to one end of the 24-foot goal in 600 milliseconds. If the goalie waits to see which direction the ball goes, which might take one second, it is too late, the ball is in the goal. Even though a world-class goalie can cover the entire net, a penalty kick is pretty much a guaranteed goal.
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