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
It’s mainly because the air resistance increases in proportion to the square of the velocity. So if something is going twice as fast, it has 4x the air resistance.
The ball leaves the bat going very fast (120+ mph), so at the beginning of its flight it slows down quickly because the air resistance is much higher. If we want the ball to go far, it needs to cover more horizontal distance while it’s going fast, so it’s better for it to be moving at an angle shallower than 45 degrees during that time. If it leaves at a 45 degree angle, the horizontal velocity is lost more quickly (edit: more quickly in terms of how far the ball has moved horizontally over a period of time)
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