For a while, I've been wondering about the actual effect of the humidor at Coors Field. When most of the talking heads mention it, they make it sound like when the Rockies started using it in 2002, mile-high Coors Field suddenly turned into some kind of pitcher's haven on par with the old Astrodome. That seemed silly to me and most of the Rockies' home/road splits seem to confirm that. If you need more confirmation, two researchers at the University of Colorado have gotten down to it and done some research on the effect of extra moisture on the flight pattern of a baseball:Edmund Meyer and John Bohn of the University of Colorado at Boulder used simulations to show that the aerodynamics of a moistened baseball are actually slightly better than those of a dry one. The work, posted on the popular ArXiv preprint server, adds to a growing body of evidence that humidified balls are, for all practical purposes, as easy to hit as their dry counterparts.Of course, all you really had to do was look at recent park factors at Coors' Field (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007) to know the place is still a hitter's haven, but being a bit of a science dork myself I like to see the proof. Remember kids, don't believe everything you see on TV, especially not if it's on Baseball Tonight.
[...]
The duo measured the mass and diameter of 15 baseballs stored for two weeks at relative humidities of 32%, 56% and 74%. They then fed their data into computer models to calculate the drag on the humidified balls. Surprisingly, they found that drag actually dropped as balls became more humid. The reason, according to Meyer, is that the increased mass allows the ball to cut through the air more easily. This more than offsets the increased air drag from the tiny increase in surface area.
Via BBTF, which I would be lost without.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-07-2007 @ 5:39PM
repoz said...
"Via BBTF, which I would be lost without."
Hey, don't follow me...I ain't no Charlie Steiner!...:)
Reply
12-08-2007 @ 3:41PM
Michael said...
While I lack the science skills required to actually convince you the humidor actually works, I would like to refer you to the experiment conducted recently on TVs Mythbuster program.
They took balls stored for 2 weeks in one of two different ambient humidities (10% or 90%), dropped them from standardized height of about 10 feet, and measured how high they bounced. They found that the 10% balls bounced an average of 14% higher than the 90% balls. This would correspond to a difference between a 360ft fly ball and a 420ft fly ball. During the second part, they created a machine designed to deliver a standardized force to a batted ball, and measured how far they actually travelled on a baseball field. They did not give specific numbers, but at the end of the experiment, there were clearly clusters: the 10% balls the furthest, the 90% balls the shortest, and a group of "in-between" balls (stored at 50% humidity) in the middle. They conclude that the myth was "plausible."
Furthermore, for your entertainment, I present the results of the corked bat experiment they offered...they built a baseball "cannon" which fired a ball at ~80mph at one of two bats (standard and corked), which were rigged to a machine which struck the ball at ~ 60mph. They then measured the speed at which the ball came back off the bat. This was an experiment with a very small sample size, but in general they found that the corked bat would cause the ball to travel at ~1/2 the velocity of the standard bat, thus "busting" the myth of corked bats.
And, just for kicks, here is the results of the theory a batted ball can be hit so hard the cover would come off...they used the same baseball cannon, and measured the speed at which a cover could be knocked off the baseball when it strikes a stationary (I think) bat. They tested up to 200mph without any success (in fact, they would totally splinter the bat at this speed). Then they dialed it up to 435mph and at that speed knocked the cover off the ball...not too interesting an experiment to me, but whatever....the point of Roy Hobbes of The Natural being fantasy was accomplished.
Have a great day....Batter up!
Reply