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Baseball 1
Mon May 31, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Now that the baseball season is well underway, we thought it would be interesting to
see how weather affects the game. To that end, we spoke with Robert Adair, author of
"The Physics of Baseball," and the only person to ever be Physicist to the National
League. First, Dr. Adair, what effect does the wind really have on a baseball?
RA: A very large effect; a 400-foot homerun in still air—if there’s a 10 mile-an-hour
breeze behind the batter—that’ll add about an extra 30 feet. Conversely, if the wind is
blowing in at 10 miles an hour, that’ll take off about 30 feet. And the difference between
430 feet and 370 feet is a very big difference. And 10 miles an hour is about the
average wind velocity in the United States.
BY: Okay, then how far can someone actually hit a baseball?
RA: Without a wind, it’s pretty difficult to hit a ball over 500 feet. [If] somebody tells me
Josh Gibson hit a ball 600 feet, or something like that, I just plain, simply don’t believe
it.
There is a ball hit by Mickey Mantle that’s really well measured, so we know exactly
where it hit. It’s usually called 560 feet, but that’s after it bounced and rolled across the
street. But that hit about 510 feet. If you look at the Weather Bureau, there was about a
25 mile an hour wind blowing out.
BY: Tomorrow, why a thunderstorm could help you "touch ‘em all." The Weather
Notebook is produced by the Mount Washington Observatory, with help from Subaru of
America and the National Science Foundation. Visit our website at
www.mountwashington.org.
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