Baseball superstitions put to the test

PhysOrg : Lloyd Smith, an associate professor at Washington State University’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, recently investigated three questions of relevance to major league baseball: Can a baseball be hit farther with a corked bat? Is there evidence that the baseball is livelier today than in earlier years? Can storing baseballs in a temperature- or humidity-controlled environment significantly affect home-run production? Smith, working with colleagues from the University of Illinois and Kettering University, tested all three premises at his Sports Science Laboratory on the Pullman campus. “I’ve got the cool machine that can do the tests,” said Smith. He has published descriptions of his experiments and their results in his article “Corked Bats, Juiced Balls, and Humidors: The Physics of Cheating in Baseball” in this month’s American Journal of Physics.