Baseball Science
Catching a fly ball may look easy, but scientists know that it’s anything but: it turns out it’s the hardest hit to catch.
Researcher Ken Fuld became curious about this when his son began playing professional baseball. He says, “An outfielder is computing a collision course between the ball and the fielder in much the same way as a bird of prey tries to intercept another bird also in flight for its meal or an insect tries to contact a member of the opposite sex for the purpose of mating. Fielders must figure out the trajectory of the ball and combine that with information about their own movement in a way that requires a quick initial calculation of this information and then constant updating of information to correct for slight errors.”
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