Baseball Flight Essay

Baseball Flight Baseball is a game of pitching, fielding, running and hitting. There are many physics factors that go into each of these things. Hitting the baseball and the flight the ball takes off the bat has a lot of science behind it. The distance the ball travels is determined by several factors that all serve a purpose in the end result. Pitch speed has a large role in how far a baseball is hit. The faster the ball is pitched, the harder it will bounce off the bat. Bat speed is another obvious factor in baseball flight. The harder the bat is swung, the faster the ball will come off it. These two things will only make the ball go far if it has a good angle of elevation. The ball will travel farthest if it is not popped up or

The ball actually goes farther when it has spin on it. There are also a lot of weather factors that can determine how far the baseball travels. Wind is one of the more obvious factors, but there are also more that are not as obvious. Humidity, temperature and air density are examples of this. There are several factors that contribute to the flight of a baseball, and they all play an equally important part in the distance the ball travels. The flight of a baseball is a very interesting thing. There are so many factors that contribute to where the ball goes. In the Major Leagues, players are able to hit home runs at what seem like the most improbable of times (Studeman). Sometimes the ball is hit on a path that is somewhat close to horizontal to the ground. Other times the ball seems to be a complete pop fly that manages to sail over the fence. Either way, the result is the same (Studeman). On June 18, 2010, Torii Hunter crushed a home run off of the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. According to the “Hit Tracker”, the ball would have traveled four hundred and fourteen feet until it hit the ground had it not landed in the outfield bleachers. The ball never reached higher than forty-seven feet off the ground

Some factors are obvious and some are not as obvious. Some that are more obvious include the bat and pitch speed, wind resistance, initial angle of elevation, and the spin on the ball. Some other factors that may not be as obvious are humidity, temperature, and air density. These are all very different and seem like they have nothing to do with each other but they all contribute to the distance the ball travels. No home run is the same as another, because of these. The flight of a baseball and the reasoning behind where it went are very interesting, and there is a scientifical explanation behind it all that deals with the many factors that contribute to