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5000 fps Camera Reveals the Physics of Baseball

concealment sends this quote from an article at The Physics of Baseball "This clip from Game 4 shows Marco Scutaro hitting the ball right near the tip of the barrel. The amplitude of the resulting vibration is so large that the bat breaks and the ball weakly dribbles off the bat. Note that the bat splinters toward the pitcher. The reason is that when the ball hits the barrel tip, the barrel of the bat bends backward toward the catcher and the center of the bat bulges forward toward the pitcher. That is the natural shape of the fundamental vibrational mode of the bat. Since the fracture occurs near the center which is bulging outward, that is how the bat splinters, as the wood fibers on the pitcher side of the bat are stretched to the breaking point. If the ball had impacted the bat near the center, the center would have bulged toward the catcher, as in the Yadier Molina clip. Had the vibrational amplitude been strong enough in the Molina case, the bat would have splintered toward the catcher."

8 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Wrong about vibration by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The bat doesn't break the way they describe.

    1) It doesn't bend in the middle, it bends close to the fixed end (where it is being held).
    2) What they describe is not the fundamental mode shape of a held bat. They are describing a free-free beam, but bats are usually held.
    3) It does bend similar to its fundamental mode shape. But it's not breaking due to vibration. It's being deflected by an impulse load and breaking.

    Simple engineering, and they got it wrong.

  2. Ummmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You would THINK they would have added a video to the article.

  3. Statistics by Machtyn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does anyone else think that the game of baseball survived the 50's and 60's simply because math and science could utilize it to teach their subjects? I don't see baseball as a game, but of a boatload of data and statistics.

  4. Re:Isn't the game long enough already? by seyyah · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just as long? Show me a five day game of baseball that ends in a draw. And if you are going to count "best of X playoff" multiple games as a single game, then cricket has the 5 test series, for 25 days of playing also ending in a draw.

    What's so bad about a game ending in a draw? Seems like is an obsession in American sport that a winner be declared. Just look at what they did to hockey.

  5. Re:Isn't the game long enough already? by Dishevel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sport = Competition = Winner/Loser
    In what backwards world do people live in where competition is not to decide winners and losers?

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  6. Re:Isn't the game long enough already? by JustOK · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Pity the person who is incapable of only seeing two out of three possible outcomes in a competition.

    --
    rewriting history since 2109
  7. Re:Isn't the game long enough already? by Dishevel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There is no equality in competition.
    There are only Winners, Losers and being unwilling to put in the work to see which is which.

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  8. Re:Isn't the game long enough already? by JustOK · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the competitors are equal, then there is equality in competition.

    --
    rewriting history since 2109