OT: Middle School science project ideas involving baseball or softball
Thank God for OT season.
My 13 year old daughter is looking for a topic for this year's science expo. For a variety of reasons, she lost her science partner, and is now going it alone, and looking for a new topic. She loves softball and wants to do something related. I figured some of you physics/engineering people (who also like sports) might have some ideas or directions she could go in. Remember: this has to be easy enough for an 8th grader. The criteria are as follows:
Must have a testable question.
Must be able to test the hypothesis.
Must have an independent and dependent variable.
She's had several ideas but most of them require equipment to be testable (swing mechanics and velocity, for ex).
February 24th, 2017 at 2:15 PM ^
February 24th, 2017 at 4:56 PM ^
All true. You could use a pitching machine to eliminate some of the variability in pitches, but the sample size would still be an issue. Still, it's softball season and teams are practicing all over the place. Go to some schools and have their players visualize 10 or so hits before taking BP and have each subject swing at every pitch thrown. Go to another team and have them merely try to hit every pitch thrown. Control for the number of pitches each, of course, and the visulatization technique. Chart the number of hits in fair territory and distance. Compare resutls between the two groups. Pick up MacArthur Fellowship.
February 24th, 2017 at 5:02 PM ^
As an aside, I know anecdotally and through personal experience that visualization works. I did it when I played baseball as a kid and I taught my teams to do the same when I coached little league. Results were markedly better after visualizing the task prior.
February 24th, 2017 at 3:03 PM ^
Is it true that large boobs provides a velocity or accuracy advantage?
February 24th, 2017 at 3:36 PM ^
a legal wooden bat. Measuring the spit ball effect/no effect. Measuring the effect of wind on hitting home runs and how much farther the ball has to travel becasue of a wind ffrom differnt directions.
February 24th, 2017 at 10:49 PM ^
damn i'm terrible at typing. Third time trying to post this
Similar to Bosch's post above, way more detailed... hopefully not tl;dr
Here goes:
Attach a softball to the chuck of a variable speed drill (drill a hole in the ball, glue in a dowel or screw in a cut-off bolt, try to get it as centered as possible, might ruin a few softballs trying to get one that spins in the drill without wobble), clamp the drill to a tabletop. Get some dry ice (at Washtenaw Dairy!) or a cheap Halloween smoke machine. Get a fairly bright backlight and a matte black or high contrast (green?) backdrop. Get a variable speed fan. Make the dry ice or smoke machine produce smoke (careful, drop small chunks of dry ice in a pretty good volume of warm water), blow the smoke past the ball with the fan, spin the ball with the drill. Vary the fan speed (simulates pitch velocity) and drill speed (simulates ball rotation). Darken the room, shine the light on the ball (from below?), and take digital video of the smoke against the backdrop as it goes around the ball.
Hypothesis? Maybe something about visualizing various pitches (drop, curve, screw, rise) based on pitch speed and ball rotation https://youtu.be/23f1jvGUWJs (need data, as stated above, google "Magnus Force, for example: https://youtu.be/8kVuKAqy_2k), types of turbulence around the ball, effect of seam orientation https://goo.gl/gjFrO4 (would require drilling several balls in different locations relative to the seams or, like in the youtube video, gluing a string around one side of the ball for an exaggerated effect), smoke over/under the ball indicating air pressure differentials, set the drill on an angle to show pure backspin vs side spin, etc. Seeing effect of spit and tar on the ball might be fun too. THis is where the sciencey part comes in, but I'm sure you and she can come up with something interesting!
Considerations? I googled softball pitch spin and it looks like top college players can pitch up to 1800rpm (30 rev/sec), I think drills will go up to 2000rpm (google the drill model number to get the RPM). You'll probably want some actual pitch data. Here's a link to some softball spin data for various pitches: http://www.revfire.com/files/Spin_Rate_Guide_-_SBO_v7 . Not sure of pitch speeds (simulated by fan speed), should google that also. One issue might be if the fan is blowing too fast you might not get a good smoke visualization. A cheap 3-speed desktop fan will probably work, though. If smoke is thick enough, probably not a problem. But, if so inclined, you could rig up a model train speed controller to a battery powered fan (always available at Salvation Army store!) or just use different numbers of batteries in series to get a good range fan speed control. If you want to accurately measure pitch (air) speed, get a cheap weather station and set it's Anemometer fan behind the ball. There are also cheap (<$20) contact tachometers to measure ball spin RPM. I would probably cut a hole in the backdrop and have the shaft on the ball go through it from behind, would make the video easier to shoot with the drill hidden behind the backdrop. Maybe construct this whole thing in an enclosure, something like a refrigerator box laid on its side.
I know, shut up already, quit drinking, go to bed ((R) a registered trademark of Toys-R-Us)
I have no idea if this would actually work, but it sounds kinda cool. And I'm also not sure I passed middle school science. But you do get to go to Washtenaw Dairy.
Good luck to her! Some creative ideas on this board!
February 25th, 2017 at 3:20 AM ^
Look it up on youtube but it is a ball painted with conductive paint, a glass bowl, aluminum tape and a power source. shows how an actual particle accelerator works and how it increases the speed to the voltage. Boom she wins the sceince fair the person who dumped her will cry because they did not stick around for the awesome magic sceince device