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Sporting Gadgets: Fox's Mobile Baseball Widget |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
New Toys
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Tuesday, 16 September 2008 |
Among all the busy research and development here at Dyscern World HQ Labs, we do occasionally like to take time out for fun. Last year I organized our first annual laser tag tournament, with real lasers, but that ended predictably with several interns, once again, in the emergency room.
This year we're trying something slightly less dangerous -- fantasy
baseball. Our accountant George, having a good head for numbers, is
stomping over everyone. He is also, however, recommending this little
widget from Fox Sports website. With it, you can track all your fantasy
players and teams with constantly updated news and numbers from the Fox
Sports team. The widget works across various platforms -- Windows
Vista, XP, Mobile and Facebook.
 You didn't ask, but I'm telling you anyway: While debating the fantasy
charts, we started pondering some baseball physics and came up with
this stumper -- at what angle should a baseball should leave a bat to
ensure the greatest distance? This is the kind of question that will
mobilize a labful of scientists quickly, and so we ran some simulations
on the new HAL 2000.
If there were no such thing as air resistance, an angle of 45 degrees
would give the greatest distance, as it would equally distribute the
force of the baseball between the horizontal and vertical axes,
offering a compromise between how long the ball would remain aloft and
how far it would travel while doing so. But because of air resistance,
the flight path of a ball diminishes rapidly after it reaches its
highest point, and the angle of the ball needs to be lower for the ball
to fly farther. So, an angle of roughly 35 degrees yields the greatest
distance in most conditions.
Bust that out at your next ball game and earn points with your brainy jock friends.
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