Ernie : Not sure if this answers the question of the day, but it adds information. Also an interesting short article in Scientific American for August 2010 about the physics of baseball. As Steve Mirsky said, "straight fastballs always drop slightly on their way to home plate." Gravity has this effect. Anyway, what I referred to as "leverage" is discussed below. This is actually a combination of factors : Torque particularly. But there is also an effect that I'd compare to a spring, which concerns force created by muscles and which --I think-- accelerates the ball ( initially ) even if the pitcher's arm isn't moving at 95 mph. Also, gravity does provide an assist. Not only the 10 official inches height of the mound, but another amount of inches from the height of release of the ball towards where it is aimed, which is always lower. George Will would know for sure. You know him better than I do. Maybe he would provide the exact information if you called. Billy ;-) Speed of the Fastest Pitched Baseball
_The Physics Factbook_ (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/) ™ Edited by Glenn Elert When throwing a baseball, it isn't the pitcher's muscle mass that determines how fast the ball goes, but rather it is the amount of torque the pitcher puts on his body. The elite flame-throwing pitchers can maximize this effort, and throw a baseball at speeds in excess of 100 mph (44.7 m/s). It seems as if there is an imaginary boundary, preventing pitchers from going much past that point. However, this boundary isn't as imaginary as one would think. The reason that pitchers struggle to throw a ball faster than that, is because once you get to that speed, additional muscle mass doesn't help throw a baseball any faster. It has been calculated that bout 80 newton-meters of torque act on a pitchers elbow when he throws it at 100 mph. If a person were to put any more torque on their elbow, they would probably snap. Hence, pitchers usually are unable to go past that point. When the pitcher throws a ball, he knows that eventually it is going to hit the ground. In order for the ball to go further, he is going to have to keep it in the air longer, before gravity forces it to earth. The way to keep it in the air longer, is to increase the angle of his throw. As soon as the ball leaves the pitchers hand, gravity begins pulling it downward. Even the fastest pitcher's smoke ball may drop as much as 2 feet (60 cm) by the time it reaches the catcher. That is why there is such a thing as a pitchers mound. The pitchers mound is 10 inches (25 cm) above the level of home plate, with a degree of slope from a point 6 inches (15 cm) in front of the pitchers mound to a point 6 feet (2 m) toward home plate. Even with the mound, the pitcher must always aim a little higher than the point where he wants the ball to go. The pitcher knows that the ball will reach a point where its upward velocity will be zero and the ball will start to drop. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
