[ELI5] Why in baseball the optimal angle for a home run is a lot less than 45 degrees?

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Why in baseball the optimal angle for a home run is a lot less than 45 degrees?

In high school physics (okay, this is no longer 5 year old level) to throw something to the most distant, you throw it at 45 degrees.

But why in baseball the optimal angle for hitting a home run is a lot less than what is taught in physics?

I kind of understand it has to do with air resistance, but why does air resistance change the angle by that much?

In: Physics

11 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

>In high school physics to throw something to the most distant, you throw it at 45 degrees.

In high school physics you ignore air resistance.

That’s it, air resistance is complicated as hell so you just ignore it in high school.

But in the real world it has a huge impact so sports such as Baseball, Golf, Discus, Javelin, Frisbee etc. where you are supposed to throw or hit things far need to adapt to the air resistance to find optimal angles.

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