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."

Comments

Wrong about vibration

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Statistics

[Machtyn]

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.

Re:Isn't the game long enough already?

[JustOK]

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