Sunday, March 30, 2008

More impressive...

...the fact that Nolan Ryan could throw a baseball 100 miles an hour, or that Andy Roddick could serve serve a tennis ball 150 miles an hour?
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3 comments:

tlguthrie said...

nolan ryan. he is using no tools besides his hand to throw a ball that fast. plus, andy roddick is rude.

March 31, 2008 at 2:40 PM
Anonymous said...

I'd like to add a couple of softball players who can pitch 70+ mph. If you compare a 101 mph fast ball coming from 60.5 ft away to a 71 mph underhand pitch from 43 feet, a batter has .408 seconds to react to the fast ball and .413 second to react to the softball pitch. Relatively speaking, the overhand pitch is .005 seconds "faster." Impressive, nonetheless.

(Formulas for calculations taken from http://www.nieworld.com/teachers/schools/022807.htm.)

April 3, 2008 at 12:27 AM
Rachel said...

Yeah, but how much force does it take to throw a 101 mph fast ball that weighs no less than 5.0 oz and no more than 5.25 oz (we'll use an average of 5.125 oz. and convert to grams giving us 145.29, sig figs don't apply here) that far, and how much force does it take to throw a softball 70 mph which weighs 6.8 oz (192.78) that far? Well I'll tell you. F = ma, so the acceleration of the baseball is 110.66 m/s/s and the acceleration of the softball is 55.27 m/s/s. So the force on the baseball is 16.08N and the force on the softball is 14.85N. Crap, I was hoping those would be closer, or that the softball would be more since it's heavier. Nevermind.

And I agree with Taylor. Well put! Andy Roddick uses tools, and Andy Roddick is a tool. I wish I knew more about simple machines. I could figure out the force on both. Hmm, I'll get back to you on that one.

April 13, 2008 at 5:47 PM

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