Question

1. In Major League Baseball, a typical fastball is pitched at a speed of about 90 mph, or 40 m/s. The batter can perform the remarkable task of completely reversing the direction of this ball and sending it back at about 105 mph, or 47 m/s. Doing this at just the right millisecond to get the ball to go where the batter wants it to go is such an amazing feat that a Yale physicist once jokingly declared that hitting a baseball is "clearly impossible". For simplicity's sake, in this problem assume the ball is hit back in exactly the same direction, straight toward the pitcher (though clearly this rarely happens in a real baseball game). a) The mass of a standard baseball is 145g. What is the change in momentum of the ball after being hit? b) The ball is typically in contact with the bat for just 1.2 ms. What is the average force exerted on the ball by the bat during this time? Convert to pounds to get a sense of how huge it is: 1 lb. = 4.45N. c) What is the change in kinetic energy of the ball? d) What average power, in units of hp (1 horsepower = 746W), does the batter deliver to the ball?

Answer 1

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