Finding and understanding the sweet spot on a wooden bat. When you strike a bat against a ball it sends vibrations, much like the vibrations acting on airplanes or bridges, which travel in waves through the bat. This motion is important to understand because every vibration the bat experiences takes energy away from the ball's speed as it leaves the bat. If you hit the ball at a bat's "nodes", the frequencies (each bat vibrates at several low and high frequencies at once, which is like the harmonics of stringed instruments) cancel out and since this happens you don't feel the sting in your hands that you experience when you hit the ball at different points on the bat. There is some discrepency of where the sweet spot is on the bat. Some believe that the sweet spot is 17 inches from the end and others believe that it is 6 inches from the end. For a wooden bat, I tend to believe that the sweet spot is 6 inches from the end of a 34 inch bat (opposite of where your hands are). This is due to the fact that if you were to hit a ball 17 inches from the end, you would be hitting on the bat's emblem. If hit hard enough, the bat would break because this is a weak spot in the bat due to the stamping of the emblem. It's Basic Physics When looking at a collision between a baseball bat and ball, three things always apply: Conservation of linear momentum- The linear momentum of a particle of mass, m, moving with a velocity, v, is defined to be the product of the mass and velocity: p=mv Elastic collision- An elastic collision between two objects is one in which total kinetic energy (as well as total momentum) is the same before and after the collision. Conservation of energy- Energy can never be created or destroyed. Energy may be transformed from one form to another, but the total energy of an isolated system is always constant. Newton's Third Law- States that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. How hitting the ball works The Swing When a person swings a bat, their arms propel the bat to a high velocity which is needed to transfer momentum to the ball and send it sailing. Also, there is a transfer of energy starting with the batter then moving from the batter's arms to the bat and then when contact is being made with the ball the energy in the bat is transferred to the ball which propels the ball forward (hopefully:)) The force that acts on the ball, as contact is being made (contact is about 1/1000sec.
Each time the ball ricocheted off the bat, I grew to understand more and more: my swing wasn’t the problem. I had gotten lost in the pressure, the expectations bearing down on me with the weight of the world that I had
The safety of the players is the biggest concern in all levels of baseball. The belief that metal bats result in more injuries than wood contributes to the reasons MLB does not allow their use. One contribution to this belief is the difference in exit speed of the ball off the different bats. It was found that aluminum bats produce an average of 92.5 miles per hour exit speed, compared to wooden bats averaging an 88.6 miles per hour exit speed ("Baseball: Wooden Bats Vs. Metal Bats"). This is a difference of 3.85 miles per hour, which is significant considering the time it takes for players to react to a hit ball ("Baseball: Wooden Bats Vs. Metal Bats"). A study shows that it takes 0.4 seconds for a ball hit 93 miles per hour to travel 54 feet, and because the pitcher's mound lies at 60 feet-6 inches away from home plate, the pitcher has less than 0.03 seconds to react to a line drive hit to them (McDermott). While compared to the time it takes to blink an eye, 0.095 seconds, pitchers do not stand a chance against a line drive (McDermott). The use of met...
Dad said that one of these days I would figure it out, but to this day I am still clueless. I have always been able to throw a decent curve ball; you don’t just throw 6 one hit games in your high school career without one. I have always wondered why and how the ball curves through the air, and it wasn’t until now that I have really had the chance to research a topic that has puzzled me for so long. I would bet that even pitchers in the “Big show” don’t know how or why, but they obviously have the talent and ability.
The game of baseball can be divided into three broad categories: hitting, pitching, and defense. No other facet of the game gets as much attention as hitting. For example, every year the MLB puts on a home run derby. No other part of the game draws as much attention. The traditional statistic that measure hitting ability is batting average (BA or AVG). To find a players batting averag...
Many people might think that swinging the bat straight through the ball would be enough to hit the ball a decent distance off the bat. There's many more mechanics involved in the swinging process. Muscle has only a small part to play in the swinging a bat for power. There are two types of mechanics involved while swinging a bat, Linear and Rotational. Rotational mechanics are the dominant source of power in the swing. Out of the rotational mechanics come the two forces that help generate the speed and power of the swing, torque and the other comes from the energy of rotation. Speed from the energy of rotation comes from the path that your hands follow as you swing the bat. The speed generated by the circular rotation from your hands is like a ball at the end of a string, as long as your hands are moving in a circle then the ball continues to accelerate in a circle. So the bat will also move in at an increasing speed as long as your hands are following a circular path as you swing. Any foward movement of the hands or body in a straight line won't add to the overall bat speed.
There are a few ways to cheat in baseball, the big one is steroids or HGH (human growth hormone). Another way is corking your bat, and that’s what my experiment is all about. Now I am not using wood bats like the MLB does I am using 2 aluminum bats, one corked and one normal. One bat I will take the top off and put some type of ball or substance that will make that bat bounce more, like a few racquet balls or something like that. The theory is to make the ball go a lot farther than with just a regular bat. The experiment calls for wood bats but I altered it just a tad and used aluminum bats because that sounds more interesting to me. I chose this experiment because I really like baseball and this one stood out to me more than anything else on sciencebuddies.
...the knuckle ball will go the direction of least resistance. This makes the pitch very unpredictable and hard to control.
For as long as I have been around aluminum bats, there has always been the question of safety. Each year we hear about a college pitcher being injured from a line drive off of an aluminum bat. Some say this is because the aluminum bats allow the ball to come off the bat quicker, but studies have shown that the exit speeds' of the balls coming off a wood and aluminum bat are nearly the same. This leaves the Moment of Inertia (MOI) as a possible cause. The MOI is simply where the weight is based in the bat. Wood bats can have the exact same MOI therefore causing the same so-called injuries that the aluminum bats cause (Russell). There has also been a study which compared the number of injuries in the NCAA and the Cape Cod League occurring from wood bats and aluminum bats (Douglas). The study showed that there are in fact more injuries caused from wood bats than aluminum. Most of the wood bat injuries were from thrown or splintered bats in which some resulted in serious injury. Rick Helling knows all too well about the injuries wood bats can cause. Helling, who was pitching for the class AAA Nashville Sounds last year, threw an inside pitch to a batter and shattered his bat which caused a jagged 8 inch shard of the bat to be impaled in his arm. The incident was so gruesome one of his teammates fainted. Recently there have been more injuries occurring such as Helling's which involved a wood bat than those involving aluminum.
Baseball is not a difficult game to comprehend, but it can a very long time to achieve a high level of performance. Usually one starts playing this game at a very young age and the first thing they start out with is throwing. Throwing a baseball involves exploiting all major muscle groups in the body to generate a large torque on the arm that will in turn create a high potential for speed when it is released.
4. How would you explain your results using the terms: impulse, momentum, force, and time? Use equations to help you explain the results.
First off, the knuckle ball. It is called the hardest pitch to hit. A pitch that seemingly floats like a butterfly and then magically drops into the strike zone, dumbfounding the batter and almost always resulting in a strike out. But how is this pitch actually thrown? The name of the pitch essentially entails how the pitch is thrown, the pitcher curls his fingers into his hand, placing the knuckles of his fingers on the ball, and releasing the ball in this manner and fashion. But why does this work? It comes down to the position of the laces. By throwing the ball off the pitcher’s knuckles, the ball exhibits no spin throughout the entire duration of the pitch. This allows different lift forces within the air is passes to exert themselves upon the ball. By doing this, the ball is subject to different planar movements as a result of different lift forces manifesting themselves upon the baseball that is thrown. In a simplistic explanation, this is why a knuckle ball “knuckles” as it is thrown.
Ever wonder why a curveball or slider moves how it does. This is a very important pitch as it can cause the hitter to react as if it is a fastball but will then break away from the barrel of the bat. There are many things that go into making these pitches move.
When the first ball collides with the second, the first ball stops, but its momentum isn't lost,it is transferred to the second ball, then the third, then the fourth, until it reaches the very last ball. You can see this conservation of momentum as the last ball swings into the air with nearly the same momentum as the first ball, so if two balls are lifted into the air on one end of the cradle and released, then two balls on the other side will swing in response.
Baseball is known as America’s national pastime, and has been played for over 100 years. Baseball can be a lot of fun, but is also extremely challenging to play, especially trying to hit a 90 mile per hour fastball. I am a very devoted baseball player myself, and over the years I have learned numerous key things about the game. Baseball does not only require physical strength to hit and throw the ball, but it also requires a great mindset, such as, mental preparedness, concentration, and a positive attitude.