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The Intersection of Baseball and Physics Apr. 24

Story posted April 23, 2008

Physicist and baseball enthusiast Alan Nathan will give a talk titled "Physics and Baseball: An Intersection of Passions" at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 24, 2008, in Searles Science Building, Room 315. The talk is open to the public and admission is free.

Alan Nathan has been a physicist for all his professional life. He has been a baseball fan even longer. And in recent years, he has figured out that he can do both physics and baseball at the same time. It is truly like having your cake and eating it too.

In this talk, Nathan will tell some of the ways that a physicist analyzes the game of baseball. In the course of doing so, he will address some interesting and practical questions from a physics perspective: How does a baseball bat work? Why do aluminum bats outperform wood bats? Does corking the bat help? How much did that curveball break? Why can a curveball be hit farther than a fastball? Why are towering pop-ups difficult to catch? And the very topical, can steroid usage increase home run production?

His goal is that all will enjoy this talk, whether interest is physics, baseball, or the intersection between them.

Nathan is a member of the Loomis Laboratory of Physics at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign.

His talk is sponsored by the Department of Physics and Astronomy. For more information call 725-3308.

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