With the World Series upon us, attention is focused on America’s Favorite Pastime: physics.
Okay, okay, so maybe the World Series is more a sports thing than a science thing, but there is a connection. Think way, way back to the days when PBS was the only channel worth watching (back when you were begging your parents daily to subscribe to the Disney channel). The Magic School Bus taught us all how baseball would be impossible without physics and friction. A decade or so later, however, we know a little more than Ms. Frizzle can teach us.
Enter Porter W. Johnson, physics guru from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Johnson visited NU on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 to give a lecture at Tech on the physics of baseball, a topic that encompasses two of his favorite things.
After a brief introduction, Johnson – dressed casually in a comfortable-looking hooded sweatshirt – addressed the assembly, “The thing I like about baseball is if you got [to] talk to the media about it, you don’t have to wear a suit—at least I don’t.”
The lecture that followed was both informational and informal. Johnson shared with the group everything from maximum hit distance (150 meters)to the effects of weather and geography on game play (players hit more home runs in the summer than the fall) to the best baseball movies of all time (arranged in order of his own personal preference).
Johnson’s lecture was filmed and will be available for online viewing shortly.