The Science of Baseball
Ah, it is nearly Spring, and springtime means
baseball! The pros are at
their spring training camps in the warmer parts of the United States
like Florida and Arizona.
And, 300+ Marina youths are at Los Arboles and Preston parks swinging
away with at least as much enthusiasm if not more.
Scientists love baseball.
I cannot explain exactly why this is.
But, this is a sport that unites geeks and jocks from coast to
coast. And, in fact, the
President of Marina Pony Baseball Softball is a geek-jock himself,
scientist by day, baseball empresario by night, weekend, and most school
holidays from December to July (that’d be Mr. Dr. Think Science again).
Perhaps this is because baseball,
unlike life, conforms so well to the laws of physics, where things are
predictable, orderly, and behave utterly sensibly.
Now, this does not mean baseball players and umpires behave so
sensibly. But, ball,
interacting with bat, behaves quite predictably.
You can calculate, quite reliably, exactly how to hit a ball so
that you will get a home run every time at bat.
You can draw it on paper; determine forces, angles, and
trajectories; form and solve the equations.
The sport comes in figuring out how to
get a pitcher to pitch that ball to you, and how to get your body to hit
that ball, just like on paper.
It is the interaction between the players, and trying to figure
out how to achieve a known outcome, that drives our passion for the
sport. This interaction is
like a dance. Even as
spectators, we watch the dance with the same anxiety and emotion, fear
and adrenaline as we felt back in the age of innocence at our first
school dance and the boy/girl of our dreams was watching us from across
the room (and all we hoped for then was that we might get to ‘first
base’ with Dream Boy/Girl).
The science of a baseball home run is
all in the angles. Line
drives, that travel with no arc, no change in height off the ground as
they leave the bat, are darn fast, but they don’t travel far.
This is because of our old constant friend, gravity.
The ball leaves the bat with some inertia, or some force,
imparted by the swing of the bat.
The magnitude of that inertial force depends on how hard the bat
hits the ball. Harder hits
impart greater velocities and therefore greater inertia.
But, the ball is experiencing friction as it travels through the
air. As it slows, eventually
the force of gravity, pulling the ball down, will be larger than the
inertial force and the ball will begin to fall.
Now imagine the ball is hit with the
same speed but with a slight upward arc.
At the time when inertial forces begin to weaken, and
gravitational forces start to take over, the ball will be higher in the
sky. The increased distance to the ground, and the trajectory of the
arc, ensure that the ball travels farther before actually contacting the
ground. Intuitively, we know
this. Line drives rarely hit
the home run fence. Home
runs are big arcing hits that soar into the grandstands.
It is actually more difficult to hit a
ball fast with an upward trajectory than with a straight one.
Line drives are fast and pitchers hit with these balls get hurt,
badly. However, even if the
force imparted onto the ball is lower, a sufficient arc will take the
ball farther. A little arc
goes a long way, and you can get too much of a good thing. Obviously, a
ball hit straight up goes nowhere at all except up.
The science is in finding the just right arc.
In baseball, as in life.
Lara
Ferry-Graham is Research Faculty at California State University’s Moss
Landing Marine Labs, a parent of two baseball players, and writes mostly
opinion. You can read more
of her opinions at her Science Blog: swimswithfishes.blogspot.com.
