The Physics of Cheating in Baseball

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My science report is about whether a corked aluminum bat hits a ball farther than a regular aluminum bat. But first before I get into that boring science stuff, I’ll tell you about the history of baseball. Baseball originated in American before the Civil War (1861-1865) the game was called rounders and was played in sand lots. The first professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1869. During the 1950’s and 60’s the MLB really took off, it was a time for expansion for the American league and National league. Then new turf fields and new bigger stadiums changed the game forever in the 80’s, But in the 90’s it was all about getting home runs. There have been 245,913 home runs hit in MLB history, and that’s where the physics of cheating in baseball comes in.
There are a few ways to cheat in baseball, the big one is steroids or HGH (human growth hormone). Another way is corking your bat, and that’s what my experiment is all about. Now I am not using wood bats like the MLB does I am using 2 aluminum bats, one corked and one normal. One bat I will take the top off and put some type of ball or substance that will make that bat bounce more, like a few racquet balls or something like that. The theory is to make the ball go a lot farther than with just a regular bat. The experiment calls for wood bats but I altered it just a tad and used aluminum bats because that sounds more interesting to me. I chose this experiment because I really like baseball and this one stood out to me more than anything else on sciencebuddies.
Now what I will need for this experiment is two aluminum bats, they don’t need to be the same exact bat, but they will be the same length and weight. I’ll need a few racquet balls and I will probably try it with bou...

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...g that the balls will travel a considerable distance farther than just a regular aluminum bat. I will set everything up on the football field and hit twenty five baseballs with each bat so I can get a significant amount of data out of each bat. I will set up my swinging machine in an endzone just incase my balls fly that far. After hitting each ball I will measure each hit one by one and in the end add them up from each bat. I will then average them and see which one had the better trampoline effect. I will also calculate the momentum of the two bats, I am hoping the corked bat will have the better momentum, but we will see in the end.

Works Cited

http://healthyliving.azcentral.com/aluminum-baseball-bat-trampoline-effect-4567.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_6369589_put-tennis-balls-aluminum-bat.html
(http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=180641

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