Robert Adair (physicist)

"The American ash from which bats are made has an unusually high strength-to-weight ratio. Ash was celebrated in medieval times as the only proper wood from which to construct the lances of knights err…"

"Every 3 feet of lead is worth about one-tenth of a second, and a rolling start is worth a good half second. Indeed, the difference between the runner having his weight mainly on his front foot and mai…"

"Control pitchers hit corners with an uncertainty of of about 3". One must be a fairly good shot to shoot a pistol with that accuracy."

"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…"

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

"The maximum Magnus force on a ball spinning at a rate of 1800 rpm is seen to be about one-third of the weight of the ball, so we cannot expect a ball spinning at that rate to curve more than one third…"

"We not that those players with weaker arms might be better off throwing at a lower angle to get the ball to the plate on the bounce. If the surface is Astroturf, the 90-mph player can gain as much as …"

"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 colli…"