From: ROY MAYEDA (roymayeda@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Dec 14 2004 - 14:57:01 PST
Message-ID: <20041214225701.7463.qmail@web20429.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:57:01 -0800 (PST) From: ROY MAYEDA <roymayeda@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Baseball Experiment Ideas
Hi, Anita.
That would be tricky with a bat. You'd really need a
machine setup as is used in testing equipment for
various sports. Variables that I can see coming into
play would include the speed of the swing, location of
collision along the bat's length, angle of incidence
(bat surface/ball path), angle between swing plane and
ball path, relative positions of centers of mass of
ball and bat.
The student could look at the coefficent of
restitution (COR) by dropping each ball several times
from the same height onto the same surface (same
material, supported the same way) and compare the
rebound height. I know that the test for tennis ball
COR is defined in this way.
If the student really wanted to use a bat, you could
possibly come up with some way to support the bat and
ball so that the bat would just swing vertically due
to gravity. Then, holding the ball at the same
location and releasing the bat from the same height
should give consistent results. The student may also
want to look into the effect of the material the ball
collides with. I'm not sure if anything has come of
it, but there was talk of going back to wood bats in
HS/college play because of higher batted ball
velocities with aluminum bats.
Have fun, and keep our head down!
Roy Mayeda
Wheaton HS
Wheaton, MN
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