Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 237, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1912 — CURVED BALL IS EXPLAINED [ARTICLE]

CURVED BALL IS EXPLAINED

Professor Franklin Explains Mystery ■ to Students of Columbia University Summer School. The “why" of a baseball curve should no longer be a mystery, at least to the students of the Columbia University Summer school. Ih a lecture on the “Science of Baseball Curves" Prof. W. S. Franklin explained it all as follows: “The whole secret ft a curved ball lies in the relation of the pressure to the velocity and vice versa, each ball creating its own pressure by the velocity and the spin that the pitcher gives it as it leaves his hand. “Daniel- Bernoulli!, a Swiss physicist, who died in 1762, was the man who discovered the principle. He was observing a stream of water that flowed through wide pools and narrow shoals. In the pools he soon found that the pressure was very great, while the velocity was almost nothing; in the shoals he saw that the velocity was very swift, while the pressure had almost disappeared. “This is the principle that governs ® the flight and curve of a ball. K|. the ball sails straight through air, with no spin, the air is pushed aside equally in all directions aid the ball is directly under the control of gravity, so far as its curve is concerned, and it soon falls to the ground; whereas, if the front of the ball is given a downward spin there is in addition to the straight forcing aside of the air a circulation motion of the air around the ball. This motion being over and then under the ball tends to increase the speed with which the air passes beneath the ball and retards it above the ball."