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The Physics of Baseball
beatleadam writes "After seeing Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks pitch a perfect game (coverage here), I searched Slashdot in the hopes of reading more about what the Slashdot readers thought of this feat of athleticism and science and to learn more about the physics of baseball (More information to be found here and here). As nothing was posted, I submit for your viewing pleasure a "course" in the Physics of Baseball and the subtle science that is pitching."
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
You might be interested then in The Physics of Hockey by Alain Hache. I bought it last year and found it interesting. he covers the basics from skating and stopping, to slapshots, chechs and saves. I think he even covered some of the thermo for making an ice rink.
Perfect game means no one reached base. You could actually pitch a perfect game in 27 pitches, all first pitch hits. This is why pitch count doesn't matter.
Less on the physics than the effects of that physics, from the New Yorker last week; here's a general audience article on knuckleball physics, an interview with Robert K. Adair, and finally, another physicist, Joel Hollander, who works on baseball: if you look at the master's theses list, you'll see one on the physics of pitching.
Robert K. Adair's book "The Physics of Baseball" is a good source of information on this. Both the physics-geek and physics-neophyte can find interesting tidbits in it.
I read a newspaper article once about how outfielders catch fly-balls. Basically, the ball follows an arc in the air. It's parabolic (which is fairly obvious). The way a fielder judges how far or back they need to be to catch the ball is what is interesting. The fielder will move so the ball will always appear to stay in one spot (and just get larger), even while it is on its descent. As long as this apparent motion is kept, the ball should go right into the glove. If the ball appears to move down, the fielder must move forward. If the ball appears to move up, then the fielder needs to go back. If the fielder sees any curve to the path, then he/she needs to move to the sides to "straighten" out the path. A really interesting read, wish I could find a URL w/ it.
For an object to accelerate, it's 'speed' does not need to change... only it's velocity needs to change! Velocity is a vector quantity, so it has both a direction and a rate of motion attached to it.
Therefore, an object can be moving at a constant speed, but as long as it's 'direction' is changing, it is accelerating.
So a satellite that's orbiting the earth at a constant speed, is constantly accelerating since it's direction is constantly changing.
Caleb
I know that was a joke, but if you're really interested, there is a pretty good book discussing the economics of baseball: Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Actually, there was a lot of trajectory -- in perfect games the fielders are as much to congratulate as the pitcher. There are 27 outs in a game if you pitch the 9th inning. He did not have 27 strike outs; there was a majority of outs made by the batters hitting the ball
If you blog it...
I don't know's on third.
here's the whole Abbott & Costello skit
Baseball Almanac
Here's a book on the subject.
When my father and I were playing (softball and little leauge respectivly) he bought an earlier copy of this book.
Nah. Ryan had seven no-hitters, not seven perfect games. Nolan never had a perfecto (he walked too many -- 2795 in a very long career)
You can pitch a perfect game with no pitches thrown, for there are ways that the batter can be called out without a pitch being thrown: if he steps from one batter's box to the other when the pitcher is in position to pitch or if he attempts to use an illegal bat. 27 of those, and the pitcher is credited with a perfect game.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Here at the American Institute of Physics, we love baseball. More specifically, our science writer Ben Stein loves the game, and has written several articles on it, including a statistical analysis of the chance of going to seven games, why AL batters get beaned more often, and a new way to determine under- and over-achieving teams.
If you don't want to buy a book, Doug Pappas' weblog is a good place to start. He posts a lot of interesting (to some people) articles about the money side of baseball. And if you really want the player salaries look here.
Not exactly what you were talking about, but pretty neat nonetheless.