[NIump50]

Originally posted by mcrowder
The calc at 135 was done at sea level. Anything higher would need to be faster.

The reason the Fermi guys won't bother calculating lift on a sphere is that there can be no lift on a sphere - whatever calculation you use to come up with an upward force on the bottom of the ball is exactly negated by the same calculation on the top of the ball.

And no, raised seams will not change this particular calculation, although they do come into play when calculating the Bernoulli Force that comes from the spin of the ball.

I'll give this one last try, against my better judgement.

If you insist on saying a ball has lift, why does it only have lift if the ball has backspin? Almost all of the change in vector (and all of that that matters for this discussion) of the ball that is not because of gravity is related to spin - which is why a curveball curves, and a ball with topspin drops ... and a ball with backspin falls more slowly than it might otherwise have fallen.

If a sphere had lift, then a CURVEball would rise. It
doesn't.

Could you give me the fancy scientific calculations for me to determine which way my son's knuckleball is going to go?