Greg Rundlett wrote:
> Philosophically and sociologically, I'm asking why somebody who worked > there wouldn't solve these problems out of curiosity. Because they > don't know how? Because they don't care? Because they were > conditioned by social norms to believe the subject is too difficult or > uncool? I'm actually quite surprised no one did. > The science of physics is certainly involved in this situation; you > can't escape physics in a physical world. If I thought about the > problem from more of a physical perspective, then I'd wonder if > air-resistance and distance factored into the two scenarios to create > any difference. Is there a (marked) difference in deccelleration > (initial velocity - final velocity) between the two environments due > to the almost double distance traveled by a major-league fast ball? [snip questions] There is, as you said, a small influence of the ball falling due to gravity, which I would expect to be a minor but present influence on the velocity. A comparison between the effects of gravity and of air friction would be interesting, as would any lift or other forces generated by a spin on the ball. > There is a lot more math involved, but I don't know those equations or > models. I certainly don't know how to model the aerodynamics of a > dimpled ball relative to a stitched baseball, and I guess for > practical purposes I'm happy to not care. It shouldn't be too difficult to calculate given a good experimental situation -- something any AP or college physics student could easily come up with. (Finding the acceleration and/or terminal velocity of a falling ball in a given atmospheric condition and calculating from there comes to mind.) > <small attempt to bring subject on-topic>I bet there is a lot going on > in Free Software to help physical scientists and mathematicians solve > complex problems</satbsot> My guess is that ballistics software would help more than aerodynamic modeling software in this case because of the trajectory and other factors involved. Also, to bring this more on topic, as a push for FOSS, with open source software you could use available source code for ballistics and aerodynamic modeling in order to find the exact answer here. In a closed source world, you'd have to start from scratch... In terms of education and its promotion, it might be interesting to use baseball physics to get students more interested who otherwise might not be... Brian _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
