The null hypothesis of this research is that the gases (helium, nitrogen, argon, and CO2) will have no effect on the football hang time. This study’s alternate hypothesis is if a football is filled with a gas lighter than air (helium and nitrogen), then the football will have a longer hang time; and if a football is filled with a gas heavier than air (argon and CO2), then the football will have a shorter hang time. Since the first experiment results were nullified because of an error in the PSI of the football, the second experiment results led the researcher to reject the null hypothesis. There is enough evidence to support that footballs filled with gases lighter than air will have a longer hang time and footballs filled with gas heavier than air will have a shorter hang time. The reason to make this claim is that the researcher found that gases lighter than air (helium and nitrogen) had longer mean hang times and gases heavier than air had shorter mean hang times in Table 2 and because of the error bars in Graph 2, it showed significant differences between the means. This was reinforced with the results found in the ANOVA and Tukey test. Since all the p-values were less than 0.05, the results were also statistically different. These results differ from the works of other scientists. Other scientists have found that helium and other …show more content…
Future research might include the use of other gases than the researcher used to provide more variability. It might also include more repeated tests and with a larger sample size to increase accuracy of the project. With enough experimentation and tests, the game of football could be changed forever. Future scientists may find the best gas to use to increase the optimization of the football. When more results come out, coaches, owners, and administrators will be rushing to fill their footballs with the gas that does best, but this is only possible with further experimentation and