What is the purpose of the Black Boxes NCAA Officials wear during games?

[mbyron]

Don't get too excited about the gap between the speed of light in the atmosphere and the speed of light in vacuum (which has 3 syllables, BTW). The former is 99.97% of the latter, which is certainly close enough for government work.

The speed of an electronic signal through wire is also at least 96% of c, which again is close enough, where c is about 671 million mph.

The slowest signal in the PTS system is the transmission of sound from the whistle to the microphone, which moves at a measley 760 mph (though the speed of sound varies somewhat depending on altitude, barimetric pressure, etc.).

For comparison, the speed of nerve impulses in a human timekeeper is no more than 100-200 mph, or about 3 million times slower than c.

[JugglingReferee]

If one were to aggregate the time delays in an NBA game due to the PT system stopping the clock, it wouldn't surprise me if the value was much much less than the resolution of the display, and certainly much much less than what the human eye can perceive in terms of legally released on a try/tap for goal.