Physics and Baseball: An Intersection of Passions

I have been a physicist all my professional life. I have been a baseball fan even longer. And in recent years, I have finally hit the sweet spot by figuring out that I can do both physics and baseball at the same time. This change of direction follows the path of another physicist, Robert Adair, who literally wrote the book on the subject, The Physics of Baseball, in 1991. I will discuss some of the ways that a physicist analyzes the game of baseball, with an emphasis on recent technological developments that shed new light on the game and the physics thereof. The talk will be organized around two broad topics: The physics of the baseball-bat collision and the aerodynamics of a baseball in flight. I will address some interesting and practical questions from a physics perspective, including some of the following: How does a baseball bat work? How would/did a physicist design a bat and does it outperform a conventional bat? How does a baseball trajectory differ from a "Physics 101" trajectory? How does spin affect the flight of a baseball? How does weather affect home run production? What's the effect of storing baseballs in a humidor? Why the recent surge in home runs? There should be something for everyone in this talk, whether your main interest is physics, baseball, or somewhere in between.