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Baseball 2
Tue Jun 01, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
We continue our conversation with Robert Adair, Sterling Professor Emeritus of
Physics at Yale University, and author of "The Physics of Baseball." Professor Adair
says that changes in air pressure can alter the flight of the ball.
RA: If you have a thunderstorm on the horizon and the barometer’s dropped low, the
ball’s going to go further.
BY: In fact, says the former Physicist to the National League, for every inch the
barometer falls, a batted ball can travel an extra four feet.
RA: Four foot further will increase the probability of hitting a home run by… I would, say,
guess roughly… six or seven percent.
BY: So pressure’s really come into play since they started playing Major League
Baseball up in Denver?
RA: {Laughing] Yeah, that’s a big effect.
BY: How far would a 400-foot sea-level blast carry at Coors?
RA: It turns out for complicated reasons having to do with subtleties of fluid dynamics;
to calculate how much further a baseball goes is tricky. I would guess about 425 feet,
but that will make the probability of hitting a home run 50 percent greater.
BY: So that’s why hitters like Coors Field?
RA: Yeh, hitters like Coors Field; it’s tough on the pitchers, though.
Tomorrow, we will see why some pitchers actually like the wind. Dr. Adair’s book, The
Physics of Baseball, is published by Harper Collins. The Weather Notebook is
sponsored by Subaru, and the National Science Foundation.
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