Quote:
Originally posted by Kaliix
Actually Tim, that is not entirely correct. A thrown baseball can rise, depending on the speed and elevation angle when released. It will not curve up, but it can rise. This I know.
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"Most significantly, I discovered that in order for the ball to truly rise in flight--for the Magnus force to exceed the weight of the ball--the pitch would have to be launched with a backspin of more than 3600 rpm. This is far beyond the capacity of any major league pitcher. High-speed photography shows that spin rates of about 1800 rpm are the best that can be achieved.
Thus, it is not humanly possible to throw a true rising fastball. With the ball spinning at 1800 rpm and traveling at 90 mph, the Magnus force retards the vertical drop by a little more than a foot. Instead of dropping 3 ft. vertically on its way to the plate, the ball drops slightly less than 2 ft. I concluded that the rising fastball is an optical illusion.
The ball appears to rise only because it doesn't fall as much as the batter expects it to--in other words, the ball rises only in relation to the batter's expectations."
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...tml?page=2&c=y
"Even the greatest pitchers can't violate the laws of physics. Once a ball is thrown, it follows a smooth trajectory. Physics simply doesn't allow abrupt jumps in that trajectory.
So what's happening? 'The batter is using the wrong mental model,' Bahill says."
http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects...ArticleID=1109