Science Project of the Physics of Cheating in Baseball
The rules of baseball clearly state that using a tampered bat is illegal. In 2003, Sammy Sosa was suspended for eight games after being caught using a bat crammed with cork. Other stars such as Albert Belle and Graig Nettles have been caught "corking" their bats or filling them with rubber balls. How does using one of these bats affect the distance a ball is hit? Do they really give a batter an unfair advantage?
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Velocity
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Hitting a major league fastball requires that a bat be swung at a tremendous speed as well. Since a corked bat is lighter, players often believe the increase in bat speed will help them hit a ball farther.
Mass
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Mass is another factor besides velocity that determines the distance a ball travels when hit. When a player hollows out a bat and fills it with a substance that is less dense than wood, he sacrifices mass.
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Hitting Machine
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The impact of collision between the bat and ball will be reduced when the bat has less mass. To discover if the gains in velocity overcome the loss of density, a contraption was made to swing standard and doctored bats against pitches of consistent speeds. The velocity of the balls after contact and the distances they traveled were measured.
Results
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Experiments have found that using a bat filled with rubber or cork does not increase the distance a ball travels nor the speed at which it leaves the bat. In many cases, the legal bats produced better results in both categories.
1921 Study of Power Hitting
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In 1921, Babe Ruth underwent a study conducted at Columbia University. Results found that his ability to hit homeruns may have been based more on his extraordinary psychological reflexes than on physics. The same experiment was recently performed on St. Louis Cardinals' superstar Albert Pujols, who scored similar on the tests. Of note is that Ruth used a 54-ounce bat, about 20 ounces heavier than what players use today.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit baseball image by itsallgood from Fotolia.com
