Baseball Mythbusters

[HebrewHammer]

I think their show is more about entertainment than credible science. Often the things they try and "bust" are easily solvable on paper using mathematics, deductive reasoning and research . They put on large exhibits for entertainment purposes. Which is fine because that's the purpose of their show. It's a very hands on approach which is fun. More fun than a physics lecture anyways. Well, I always enjoyed my physics lectures. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[jwill535]

But in order for a theory or hypothesis to be proven it much done in a proper experiement with all varibles covered and then repeated with the same results.

 

As for the cork not really effecting, you have to remember that the integrity of the bat has been altered. Since it is not a solid mass the transfer of energy it hampered. The biggest issue is if the loss of Mass can be made up for in the incresed violocity. I highly doudt you are able to swing the bat twice as fast just by losing 2-3 oz.

[HebrewHammer]

Why would you have to swing the bat twice as fast if you removed 2-3 oz? In the force equation, velocity V is squared. So it's proportional to the square root of the mass you remove, eg a smaller number than the mass that is removed. You wouldn't have to swing the bat much faster at all when you remove the typical ounce or two from the bat to get a little more distance out of the swing. And since the weight is mainly taken away from the bat furthest away from, that ounce or two is actually rather noticeable. The corking shouldn't effect the integrity of th bat much at all because the mass is being removed inside the bat and enough of the wood is left around the bat.

 

Something you have to remember about a baseball bat and leverages is that the bat is heaviest further away from your grip and by quite a bit. You're changing the center of gravity in the bat, moving it closer to your hands when you remove mass from the opposite end. That's why when you hold a bat backwards it appears much, much, lighter and can be accelerated much quicker. You can't discount this and the effect it will have on someone being able to swing the bat quicker. At the very least you're able to accelerate the bat to the top speed faster.

 

The bat isn't a rod with constant mass. The mass per unit of bat is greater and greater the further it gets away form your hands. This produces a tool which is mechanically disadvantageous for someone in terms of generating bat speed. It will take much longer to get the bat up to top speed. However, when you move the CG of the bat closer to the wrists, you've created a little mechanical advantage now and the bat will be much easier to swing faster.

 

This is one of the many effects metal bats give a batter. The CG of the bat is much, much closer to the hands creating a lot of mechanical advantage. As another has pointed out, it's probably not going to add much more power but it will allow a batter more time to wait on the ball and decide if they should swing. They will be able to get the bat around faster then.

 

So with a corked bat the bat is lighter and the CG is moved closer to the hands creating mechanical advantage for the batter. So the mass is lowered some but since the velocity is greater and the velocity is squared, you've created a batters advantage. And since you leave sufficient wood mass around the bat, you don't sacrifice much if any of the effect the bat has on the ball. You have to remember the wood the bat is made of is many times harder than a baseball. The bat isn't going to compress much at all. In fact, another advantage a batter would have would be to use some agent to make the wood even harder. A very hard wooden bat with a CG closer to the hands.....well, you have a metal bat now.

[HebrewHammer]

I'll say as an experiment, take an aluminum bat and find the CG, the point you can easily balance the bat on a finger. Then do the same for a wooden bat. You'll see a noticeable difference. Then cork a wooden bat by removing an ounce or 2 from the end of the bat and find the CG. Once again, you'll notice a difference. A 32 ounce bat that is now about 30 ounces and those 2 ounces were taken from the backend....that's advantage.

 

That would be the easiest way to figure out if a bat was corked or not. Every bat should have a CG that is within a very small tolerance. Have every player balance the bat on a finger before they come to the plate.

 

You almost have to winder if it would be even more advantageous to not only cork the barrel end but then add weight to the handle. This would create even more leverage...

[HebrewHammer]

Here's a link that sums everything up rather nicely about corked bats and has experimental evidence too:

 

http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/bats-new/corkedbat.html

 

They say essentially what I have above. That a corked bat will change the CG (the moment of inertia) resulting in a bat that can be accelerated faster. They also say that you won't really hit more HR's with a corked bat but rather you will be able to see a pitch longer before you commit to a swing because you can accelerate the bat faster.

 

Interestingly in Sosa's case the weight was taken out of the handle area. I guess the idea was to create a bat that flexed some, like a golf club, and create a whipping effect on the bat. But they diss him because although it would work nicely in BP where you basically get easy pitches to hit, in a game pitchers are going to jam you and make it rather easy for your bat to break when hit off the handle.

[Brian the Automator]

They say essentially what I have above. That a corked bat will change the CG (the moment of inertia) resulting in a bat that can be accelerated faster. They also say that you won't really hit more HR's with a corked bat but rather you will be able to see a pitch longer before you commit to a swing because you can accelerate the bat faster.

So, why just not use a lighter bat?...

[igor67]

Just some physics corrections. The bat to ball contact is a momentum problem and the movement of the bat is a Newton's second law problem. Which is to say the equations have gotten a bit confused here. The explanation is correct a lighter bat will allow for a greater acceleration by the hitter because F = ma. The more acceleration you have the faster the bat is traveling when it hits the ball where you use transfer of momentum or m1v1 = m2v2 NO squaring involved. The downside is clear the smaller the bat mass the less momentum it has. This is the simplest most direct explanation of the tradeoff between using a lighter and heavier bat in general. I'd assume that the potential problem with a lighter bat in general is that you have to give up length or surface area and hence decrease your odds of making contact.

[HebrewHammer]

They say essentially what I have above. That a corked bat will change the CG (the moment of inertia) resulting in a bat that can be accelerated faster. They also say that you won't really hit more HR's with a corked bat but rather you will be able to see a pitch longer before you commit to a swing because you can accelerate the bat faster.

So, why just not use a lighter bat?...

2 30oz bats would be able to be swung at different accelerations depending on where the CG was. So I'd imagine a typical 30 OZ bat would still have a CG that was down the barrel more than a 32OZ bat corked at the barrel to make it 30OZ. But then it depends where you remove the weight on the 32OZ bat to make it 30OZ. I'm not even sure what the difference between heavier and lighter bats are. Do they just take it off the end?

 

[HebrewHammer]

Just some physics corrections. The bat to ball contact is a momentum problem and the movement of the bat is a Newton's second law problem. Which is to say the equations have gotten a bit confused here.

Whoops, I sure did mess up my equation. I was referencing the kinetic energy equation and should have written it as k=1/2 mV^2. This would be the energy created at the CG of the bat... Sorry about that. Been a long time since I've exercised my brain with a physics problem!

 

[logan82]

I believe a lot of times they do stuff that gets edited out for the show because a lot of the methodology behind their experiments is just plain boring. I think they have more stuff about their experiments on their website. All the stuff they do in the background.

[And That]

Re: the corked bat piece, which is the only part of the show I saw, I can see why the cork would slow down the velocity of the ball in a standardized simulation, but in reality, I'm sure there's a pretty big placebo effect. If you think you're cheating and getting away with something, you may well be getting away with something, even if science says you aren't.

[Schlitz001]

If you think you're cheating and getting away with something, you may well be getting away with something, even if science says you aren't.

I wonder if you see an improvment in the stats of the hitters who have most recently been caught with corked bats in the year that they were caught. Of course you never know when they were using the bat and for how long. If I remember correctly wasn't Sammy in a big funk when he got caught?