2 Baseballs Collided at an MLB Game. How Did That Happen?
Sometimes insane things take place– so crazy they do not even appear real. Recently, Phillies best fielder Bryce Harper was heating up before a video game with some practice bats. He hit a great line drive, and after that it clashed with another ball in midair. That gives us some enjoyable physics to unload. Lets see how not likely this event is.What Data Can We Get From the Video?There are two balls included in this crash. Harpers most likely started its flight at home plate. Im going to call this ball A. The 2nd one was tossed towards home plate by a gamer someplace in the outfield. Lets call this ball B. I need to get a worth for where the balls begin, what their speeds are, and where they clash. The Major League Baseball clip that I linked to before is not the very best video, because it doesnt show the complete trajectories of either ball, so we might just need to approximate some stuff.One thing that we can see is the effect between the 2 balls, which occurs above 2nd base. Later on, it appears that ball B falls straight down and lands near the base. However how high above it is the point of impact? By watching the video, its possible to get an approximate complimentary fall time for ball B. (Im opting for 1.3 seconds, based upon my measurements.) If I know the time it requires to fall, and that the vertical acceleration is -9.8 meters per 2nd squared (due to the fact that this is occurring in the world), then I can discover the falling distance using the following kinematic equation: Illustration: Rhett AllainWith my quote for the falling time, I get a collision height of 8.3 meters. If the ball park remains in the x-z airplane and the position in the air is the y instructions, that means I now have all three collaborates for the crash point: x, y, and z. I can use this indicate discover the launch velocity of ball A. I understand that it starts moving in the house plate, which is 127 feet from 2nd base. So Ill put my origin at house and then let the x axis be along a line between home and second.Now I just require the preliminary speed vector for ball A such that it travels through the collision point. There are several methods to discover this, but the simplest is to just use Python to plot the trajectory of the ball and adjust the launch angle up until it “hits” the accident. Im going to utilize a starting ball velocity (the exit speed) of 100 miles per hour. (Thats 44.7 meters per second.).
Lets call this ball B. I need to get a value for where the balls begin, what their speeds are, and where they clash. The Major League Baseball clip that I linked to before is not the finest video, in that it doesnt show the complete trajectories of either ball, so we might simply have to approximate some stuff.One thing that we can see is the impact in between the 2 balls, which occurs above 2nd base. If the baseball field is in the x-z aircraft and the position above the ground is the y instructions, that means I now have all 3 collaborates for the collision point: z., y, and x I can use this point to discover the launch speed of ball A. I understand that it starts moving at house plate, which is 127 feet from second base.