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
Three factors:
1) Air resistance slows the ball down over time, so time spent in the air is not worth as much as in the airless case, pushing the optimal angle lower
2) The ball does not start at ground level. Granted a home run generally arcs much higher than the batter, but the added initial height does push the angle down a bit.
3) The 45° optimal angle from intro physics assumes that the initial speed is fixed. For the case of a bat hitting a ball that is not the case. You actually get the most speed if you hit the ball straight back. You still want to angle it upward so that it gets time in the air, but that really pushes the optimal angle downward
For professional baseball, the strength of those three is probably 3>1>2.
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