Robert Adair (physicist): Baseball

Robert Adair (physicist) is Physicist and author. Explore interesting quotes on baseball.
Robert Adair (physicist): 22 quotes0 likes

“A small, but interesting, portion of baseball can be understood on the basis of physical principles. The flight of balls, the liveliness of balls, the structure of bats, and the character of the collisions of balls and bats are a natural province of physics and physicists.”

Robert Adair (physicist)

Source: The Physics Of Baseball (Second Edition - Revised), Chapter 1, Models And Their Limitations, p. 1

“Almost all of fluid dynamics follows from a differential equation called the Navier-Stokes equation. But this general equation has not, in practice, led to solutions of real problems of any complexity. In this sense, the curve of a baseball is not understood; the Navier-Stokes equation applied to a base ball has not been solved.”

Robert Adair (physicist)

Source: The Physics Of Baseball (Second Edition - Revised), Chapter 2, The Flight Of The baseball, p. 22

“Much of the subtlety of baseball is derived from the fact that so much of the game is played in the region between definitely smooth flow and definitely turbulent flow, at ball velocities greater than 50 mph and smaller than 120 mph.”

Robert Adair (physicist)

Source: The Physics Of Baseball (Second Edition - Revised), Chapter 2, The Flight Of The baseball, p. 7

“To hit a baseball with dispatch, one needs both to step into the ball and to rotate.”

Robert Adair (physicist)

Source: The Physics Of Baseball (Second Edition - Revised), Chapter 5, Batting The Ball, p. 68