Baseball Physics, with Bill Nye

Bats, gloves, home runs, and… physics? Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the physics of baseball with Bill Nye the Science Guy, co-host Gary O’Reilly, and DJ Price, assistant coach at Barry University.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. And for this installment, we're going to talk about the physics of baseball. Physics of baseball, you probably don't often see those two words in the same place. Now, I know a little bit about physics, but I don't know as much about the physics of baseball as my good friend, Bill Nye. Special guest today, Bill.

• 0:40Bill Nye?

  Neil, greetings.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Sports Edition. And I got my co-host, Gary O'Reilly. Gary? Hi Neil. Not to chop liver, sorry I had to introduce. No, no, no, Bill takes priority. I'm building that. And where did you send Chuck today? Did you banish him somewhere? No, we haven't banished Chuck. Chuck has found gainful employment. Oh wow, okay. He's a comedian, he's got to tell jokes when he can. Doing his thing, man, and good luck to him. Especially during COVID. Well, Bill, not many people know that you, we may know you're a fan of baseball, but you've actually like studied it on almost a sabermetric level. And so we, almost, our conversations, it's kind of smelled that way. And so I didn't want to do this show without your expertise,

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  just lacing everything that Gary and I talk about. But then I realized, okay, to do this right, I mean, I played Little League, but we need somebody who's actually in the sport. And if we couldn't get an MLB person, let me get the next best thing. I got a college baseball coach who also happened to be my trainer, DJ Price. DJ, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Hey, what's up Neil? How you guys doing?

• 1:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. This is not your first appearance.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Second time, second time here.

• 1:52Bill Nye?

  And look, he's fine, he's fine.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're a coach, where are you a coach right now?

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Uh, Barry University, I'm assistant coach there.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Assistant coach.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  In Florida, uh, North Miami.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're Division two?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Division two, yes.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Division two, and you said like they, and where do they rank in that in recent years?

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, last year before the, um, the COVID hit, they were, they were up in the, the top 15 in the country. And, uh, nine and O, they were undefeated. They were going through a pretty good time and then everything hit. But, uh, they were leading the country in most offensive categories, which is a, a big deal.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay. Very, very cool. Well, glad to have you on this. We're gonna tap you for, in case something, in case Bill says something that doesn't feel right, we're gonna get your reaction to it, okay?

• 2:33Speaker 02

  It's not often I get an opportunity to override Bill Nye.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, you're, you're, you're, you're a street view of what, what Bill Nye says, because Bill, Bill's gonna ha- hand us some science. And Bill, lately, I haven't caught up with you lately, um, you've got a new podcast, Science Rules, great title. So what's the, what's the format of that?

• 2:52Bill Nye?

  One of my oldest, uh, turns of phrase, science rules. Uh, so the format is we have guests on and we talk about science. We had Jennifer Duden on just the other day.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, who's the we? You say we have guests?

• 3:05Bill Nye?

  Me and Corey, it is I, Corey S. Powell and I.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Corey, so he's your co-author on a couple of books.

• 3:11Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so if you're, you students of Corey S. Powell's, uh, he, uh, helped me edit books that I've written. And, uh, he's a very funny guy and we co-host the podcast. And he also is one of the co-producers. He does the pre-interviews, finds people, we argue about, discuss.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you just show up for the recording, is what you're saying?

• 3:33Bill Nye?

  Well, I, I mean, yeah, I guess.

• 3:37Gary O'Reilly?

  That's the word you look at, Bill. Yeah.

• 3:41Bill Nye?

  Sure, but.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And are you going on 20 years now as the CEO of the Planetary Society?

• 3:46Bill Nye?

  10 years, Neil. 10 years. Tempest Fugit, but not quite that.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this is the organization co-founded by Carl Sagan and two others, so quite the mantle to be ascending to there. Well, just congratulations on all of that. So in this first segment, we're talking about baseball as a contact sport. And normally it is the last thing ever mentioned when people give the list of contact sports. But of course, as Bill is introducing here, ball hits bat, pitcher hits batter.

• 4:14Bill Nye?

  Well, the other, apparently, the worst-

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Play at the plate, there's contact in many ways.

• 4:18Bill Nye?

  The worst contact in sports is the play at the plate, where one guy has almost no pads on. The other guy is trying to find the ball while this other human is hurtling toward him at 15 miles an hour, or whatever the heck. And if you play catcher, people-

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if-

• 4:36Bill Nye?

  If you play catcher-

• 4:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which I used to do, yeah.

• 4:38Bill Nye?

  Put your, be sure to have your left foot, or whatever it is, your back foot, parallel to the third baseline. So when the guy slides into your leg, you fold at the knee.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you don't bust up your knee.

• 4:51Bill Nye?

  You don't go sideways across your knee. This is one of these crazy details.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was bigger than all people sliding into me, so I never, they fell backwards. I-

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Back in the day, they used to call the catcher's equipment the tools of ignorance.

• 5:02Bill Nye?

  I'm pretty sure they still do, DJ.

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so let's start, wait, let's start organizationally here. So, Bill, if someone is throwing 100 mile an hour fastball, because lately they've been clocking the speed, the exit speed, exit velocity of the ball, or at least the ball upon leaving the bat. And all the home runs seem to be 103, 106, 107 miles an hour. Is that all I need? If I just make sure the ball leaves my bat at that speed and at the right angle, am I basically getting a homerun? No matter how big and bulky and strong I am?

• 5:39Bill Nye?

  Yeah, but you just threw in offhandedly, "Oh, and at the right angle." Yeah, that's like, that's like a thing. So, everybody, an apocry- a non-apocryphal story from the story of Neil and Bill. One day Neil's going musing, blah blah blah, assuming a level swing. Swabba swabba smabba. Okay, hold it.

• 6:04Bill Nye?

  There's two different things in hitting, DJ. There's hitting and there's hitting for power. So, hitting, you're aiming the ball someplace, trying to get it around defenders, over the defender's head, down the line, so the defender has to run towards you while you're running past him, and things like that. But then, hitting for power, you have to hit it at an angle that is gonna take it up, uh, over the fence.

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but Bill, does that mean I don't have to be big and burly to do that?

• 6:33Bill Nye?

  No, that's the mystery of, for example, from my Seattle fandom days, Ichiro Suzuki, who went on to play, they all do, went on to play for the Yankees. But this is a pretty small guy who could hit home runs.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so DJ, DJ, you're a burly guy, right? You have girth. And so when I think of you holding a bat, I think this guy's powerful. I should back up. But then, like Bill is saying, you get Ichiro, you get Altuve, you get people who are little. Red Sox had a few little people who hit, who's the guy with the Red Sox?

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Mookie Betts is now in the Dodgers.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But also, also the second baseman.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Dustin.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dustin Pardroya. Okay, these guys can punch the ball, hit triples, hit doubles. I don't care if there's a, if there's a, a green monster out there. So, so Bill, is it just some kind of mythology? That you need to be big? Or do you just have to move the bat with precision and with speed?

• 7:34Bill Nye?

  Well, that's all you have to do is move it with precision and speed. Yep, thank you.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we're done here.

• 7:42Bill Nye?

  In general, big guys can wait, guys who are stronger can wait a little longer to bring the bat around and direct the ball. But if you're strong, you can muscle the bat around later in the pitch.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not muscle, it's just speed. It's just reflex.

• 8:01Bill Nye?

  Okay, but the bat has mass and so you're gonna overcome its inertia with strength.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:08Bill Nye?

  And I think it was Isaac Newton who said that.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  A lot of little guys actually have some incredible bats.

• 8:15Bill Nye?

  Tremendous bat speed, yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Which, which adds to that, you know? I mean, Altuve has, has got some incredible bat speed. And, you know, with his size, you, you would think that most balls probably would be high to begin with. And, you know, because he's getting such good, you know, good bat speed and a little bit of angle upwards, because, not to say that he's short, but he is a little shorter. He, given him the right ball, he can definitely send it a long way.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, so Bill, how about at the point I make contact with the ball? How important is my musculature?

• 8:46Bill Nye?

  I don't think it's that important. It's the mass of the bat. It's the mass of the bat that's gonna.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying if I use a lighter bat, but I can get high speeds?

• 8:56Bill Nye?

  Well, this is the great controversy. So furthermore, also in addition to continue. What's happening is people are selecting thinner and thinner bat handles.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 9:08Bill Nye?

  Uh, so that, uh, the bat has a springiness. If you were somehow allowed to play baseball with some magical tennis racket, some racket that could handle, I guess that's a pun, that could deal with, uh.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Accommodate.

• 9:26Bill Nye?

  More flex, accommodate. Uh, you could really launch the ball, uh, much, much farther than is currently possible. Uh, make compare and contrast jumping up and down off a sidewalk with jumping up and down off a trampoline. So.

• 9:41Gary O'Reilly?

  So a bit like a hockey stick, a bit like a hockey, uh, an ice hockey stick where it's got that, it's composite, but it's got that flexibility in there. Is that the sort of thing you're talking about?

• 9:50Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so if you're allowed to do that, then so furthermore also.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're saying the spring would give it a little extra push?

• 9:57Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah. But so what happens then, the, another not for nothing effect is people are wearing batting gloves. And so they have a thickness. The pads on the gloves have a thickness, so then people are selecting even narrower bat handles. And, uh, able to get more flex, but then.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, is this why the bats are breaking? Because now.

• 10:20Bill Nye?

  Then you get bats breaking. You look at Babe Ruth's bat from back in the day.

• 10:25Gary O'Reilly?

  It was a tree trunk.

• 10:25Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's a hickory. You know, well, it is, it's a so-called hickory stick.

• 10:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Desperate Dan.

• 10:31Bill Nye?

  And, uh, you had to be quite strong to bring that bat around.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  And they definitely match the bats to the player now too. You know, so.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what do you mean by that?

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you know, based on size, weight, you know, the, what the, what the, the bat speed of the individual is, you can kind of gauge what you, what kind of bat they can handle before they break it or the ball breaks it. And how they can get maximum amount of speed. They, they cut the tops out to give it a little bit less ounces, more ounces.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not just go all the way and, and cork them?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:05Bill Nye?

  Corking doesn't work.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  I, I, I agree with that. It doesn't.

• 11:09Bill Nye?

  No, no.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  It would take away some of the mass of the bat.

• 11:12Bill Nye?

  Well, not just, here's the problem with corking. Our perception might be cork is springy, so if you put springy material in the bat, uh, then you would get some of that spring, some of that energy storing to the ball as it left the bat. But it doesn't work because the ball is in contact with the bat for such a short amount of time, barely a thousandth of a second. The energy doesn't have time to get into the cork and back out. And plus, you lose a tremendous amount at the interface where the cork would touch the wood. So for people out there trying this, it doesn't work.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I remembered the corking back in the seventies.

• 11:55Bill Nye?

  Well, it's been going on since the eighteen hundreds, apparently.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really? Okay, okay, then my, in my, my day, okay? The, one of the rationales was that you still have the sort of the bulk of the bat, but you made it lighter.

• 12:07Bill Nye?

  Well, you can drill all the freaking holes in the bat you want, but then you weaken it and it will shatter in another way.

• 12:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then why, why not just use a lighter bat?

• 12:17Bill Nye?

  So if you get it too light, then it fails, it breaks. This is the magical thing about baseball, everybody. This is what everybody loves about it, is after a century and a half of dinking around, things are just dialed in where it just barely works, it just barely doesn't work. And it's a game of thousandths of inches and it's just, every pitch is a statistic, it's a game for nerds. So, the thing about the bats that makes me a little crazy, how about this rule, DJ? If your bat breaks, you're out. How about that?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  I, I would, that sounds like a pretty good rule. I mean, it'd be interesting.

• 12:57Bill Nye?

  That sounds like an angry parent, Bill. Well. You break that bat. You break your toy. You gotta go and sit on the naughty stuff. Well, and you know, that's why we can't have nice things. So.

• 13:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey, take a step back, Bill. You know, you talked about Altuve, and I'll sort of do the Aaron Judge comparison. For them, the strike zone is in a different place because one's five foot five, the other's six foot five.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seven, yeah.

• 13:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Seven, even. Does Altuve have an advantage because he can get his bat below a possible ball that's coming in?

• 13:34Bill Nye?

  Books have been written, as I like to remark. The answer is absolutely without question, it depends.

• 13:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Good.

• 13:43Bill Nye?

  So, the reason both of these guys are having success at the major league level is they have compensated for the large strike zone by being a huge guy who can bring the bat around really fast. And for having a small strike zone by being a smaller guy who can bring the bat around really fast. And so...

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it also sounds like, Bill, that if you're small, then that shrinks the strike zone, so then the pitcher has to be more accurate, and you don't have to be able to swing in more places than the big guy.

• 14:16Bill Nye?

  Except you can't reach as far as the big guy. So the pitcher then has a bigger strike zone, but it's a bigger guy swinging a big...

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Away and stuff like that.

• 14:26Bill Nye?

  And you know, as we say, we're getting into where the gray areas, where it depends. And I just want to go on and on about these kids today and the bats. Okay? So on a baseball bat is a label, a brand. And skilled craftspeople in Kentucky making bats put the brand so that the grain is oriented to strike the ball edge on. And so, back when I was a Seattleite, lived there for 26 years, big Mariner fan, big Seahawks fan, I met with none other than Chuck Armstrong, who was president, not CEO,

• 15:10Bill Nye?

  not owner, president of the Mariners organization, to give a little talk to these kids, these kids today, about branding a bat. So I had this very demonstration. So the grain of the bat is oriented that way, they put the label there, so that you strike the ball edge on.

• 15:33Bill Nye?

  If you hit the ball this way, the bat will flex and ultimately fail because the grains will be moving against each other. It'll be sliding and shear, as it's called. So.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Can I show that to some of my college players?

• 15:48Bill Nye?

  Absolutely. For fun.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they don't know, DJ.

• 15:51Bill Nye?

  No, it's something.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  It's something I'm trying to explain to them for years.

• 15:55Bill Nye?

  I won't call it lost in antiquity.

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could it be that they came out of high school with aluminum bats and so they don't have to think about this at all?

• 16:01Bill Nye?

  So the reason we can't have.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  It needs to be explained, for sure.

• 16:04Bill Nye?

  So, Gary, you made reference to parents getting arms akimbo about these kids breaking their toys.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:11Bill Nye?

  If you're a parent, breaking bats is expensive. You have to go buy bats. If you're running a little league team or the next level up high school team and you're breaking bats, it's just like, it's too expensive. So that's why they, we, it, went to aluminum bats. Now, you can engineer an aluminum bat to have a tremendous amount of flex.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Bill Nye?

  And I played softball with a guy who got hit in the face with a ball that was just screaming, a third baseman, because he was just screaming because there was a few years of sort of lack of regulation in the springtivity, the springiness of the bats. And so.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he got hit in the face with a ball that was hit by an aluminum bat.

• 16:57Bill Nye?

  A guy with an aluminum bat, playing softball where you're saying.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't hit in the face with aluminum bat.

• 17:01Bill Nye?

  Not the bat. That would be very troubling. So, anyway, that's why, all the way through college, people play with aluminum bats. Then if you're an outstanding player and you get an opportunity to play in the majors with a wooden bat, you're not familiar with this notion of branding the bat and taking into account the mechanical properties of the wood.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  DJ, what do your players use?

• 17:25Speaker 02

  We use aluminum at that level. But, you know, most of them use wood during the summer, you know, just so that the scouts and coaches can get an opportunity to see what they're capable of doing with an actual bat.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a real situation, yeah, okay.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  But even at that level, you're talking, I mean, it's dangerous. I mean, it's super dangerous. You know, I think, I think all college ball should go to wood, to be honest with you.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is it dangerous? What's dangerous?

• 17:49Speaker 02

  The speeds you can get off the bat or the pitch ball. You know, so the pitcher has, I mean, think about it, there are pitchers in the major leagues that are getting hit in the head. And, and the ball is coming a fractionally slower than it would be in college when they're using metal and they're all prospects to that level. So you, you got a guy that's equivalent to an Aaron Judge at 6'6", 6'7", that's 260. And he hits a ball with an aluminum bat at a pitcher. He's got no reaction time. There's no way that he's getting.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Bill, back to your original point, if baseball has been, has become or has always been this game of inches and microseconds and, and so the slightly better bat will kill the pitcher, right?

• 18:35Bill Nye?

  Well, just that the pitcher stands that close has always been marvelous to me.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause when, when you see them catch a ball that is back to them, it's like, oh my gosh. Any fraction of a second faster or they're slower, ball faster, they slower, they lose their head.

• 18:52Bill Nye?

  You gotta wave at it, as they say. Yeah. So, uh, anyway, aluminum bats can be tuned or engineered so that they don't have this crazy springiness, but then they get, they get unesthetic, they get heavy, they get heavy in the wrong way. And so this just gets into the whole wooden bat controversy. But oh, and by the way, Gary, there's a guy in cricket called the silly mid-off.

• 19:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, it's a, it's a, it's a fielding position.

• 19:21Bill Nye?

  Yeah. It's also, what are you doing? You're standing right in front of a guy with a wooden club and a ball's going a hundred miles an hour.

• 19:29Gary O'Reilly?

  The clue's in the, the clue is quite simply their silly position.

• 19:33Bill Nye?

  Yeah. And so he doesn't wear gloves in cricket. They don't wear gloves. They haven't thought of that.

• 19:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh no, we thought about, we thought about it and we just said, no.

• 19:41Bill Nye?

  No, the only guy, the Wicket keeper is allowed to do something.

• 19:44Gary O'Reilly?

  That's right. And you are, a bowler in cricket can reach over 100 miles an hour because you are using the ground as another part of.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we're getting, we're going to get to that. In the next segment, we're going to talk about the making of a pitch. And I've had long conversation with Bill about this, and I still don't understand.

• 20:04Bill Nye?

  You want to throw with your legs.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when we come back, StarTalk Sports Edition, the physics of baseball with Bill Nye.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition, the physics of baseball. Got Gary Riley, Gary. Hey Neil. Yeah, we lost Chuck. He's, he's on a gig. Yep. He told me, so that's good. We'll. It's good for him. Good for him. Check him out on the next round. I've got with me, my trainer, I guess former trainer, because he moved to Florida, DJ Price, DJ. I have you on, not because you were my former trainer, but because I know you are a baseball crazy man. And.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Every day, all day.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every day, you bleed baseball, right? So, and just to have a ground truth on this conversation we're having with Bill Nye, who's sharing with us his sort of life's thinking and expertise on the physics of baseball. And Bill, you and I have had conversations about what pitchers do when they throw the ball, right? They're not just throwing the ball. Some other kinematic, biophysiological thing is going on. So could you just lay this out for us, what's going on on the mound?

• 21:36Bill Nye?

  Oh yeah, sure. I'm an expert on that. No, everybody, Gary.

• 21:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 21:42Bill Nye?

  You're a British descent, and so you grew up playing cricket.

• 21:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Kind of, yes.

• 21:47Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's on here because he's a former professional soccer player.

• 21:51Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm familiar with, I have held a bat and had things thrown at me.

• 21:55Bill Nye?

  Yeah. So in cricket.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Not necessarily at the same time.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the same time.

• 22:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Go on, Bill, sorry.

• 22:05Bill Nye?

  No, it's all good. In cricket, they, uh, they, you all, allow the bowler, as he's called, to, uh, I presume there's some she bowlers, two bowlers, to bounce the ball off the ground.

• 22:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, although you can, you can bowl a full toss, so it, it gets to the wicket or the batsman without touching the ground, but generally they incorporate the ground and this then adds another layer of physics to the whole affair.

• 22:35Bill Nye?

  Well, here's the thing that happened. I'm sure early on, cricketers discovered that the bowler could just overwhelm the batter, could just do anything to the batter. Batter, batsman could not, um, routinely handle the bowled ball.

• 22:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Bill Nye?

  So they made a rule that the bowler has to keep his elbow straight.

• 23:00Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, to reduce the range of damage they can commit?

• 23:03Bill Nye?

  Yeah, okay, that's another, okay, fine. But what the bowler can do is run, use his legs. And so there's an old saying, and DJ, let me just see if this is a true fact or what I whimsically call a false fact, ha, ha, ha, that you throw with your legs. Uh, agreed, totally agreed. What you wanna do in the, so to deal with this, in US baseball, originally US, in baseball, they allowed you to push off a fixed object, which is traditionally called the pitching rubber, also in the rules is called the pitcher's plate. You, uh, push with your back leg while

• 23:44Bill Nye?

  you throw, but you're allowed to bend your elbow. So it's the different rules, uh, for throwing, but in all of this, the key to it is how you grip the ball, or a key, a very important aspect of it, rather, is how you grip the ball.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relative to the stitches or how you grip the ball no matter what?

• 24:05Bill Nye?

  Uh, with respect to the stitches, right. So, uh, this is the four seam, where you see all four seams.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:14Bill Nye?

  Then you can hold it here and you see two seams, one, two. One, two, or you hold it a little crooked and you get, um, you get the curve ball, you get the slider, and then people who spend hours and hours at this throw it with hardly any spin on it with the fork ball. And then when it's hardly any spin, the stitches catch the air in spectacular ways and make it fly funny.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what's the difference between a fork ball and a, and a knuckle ball?

• 24:50Bill Nye?

  Uh, you can grip the fork ball much more tightly. When you're trying to throw a knuckle ball, you can, you're barely hanging on. And so you just can't throw it as you can't snap your wrist with the same oomph.

• 25:03Gary O'Reilly?

  So it's a faster knuckle ball?

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so Bill, okay, so they hold it all these ways. The whole goal is for the batter to not hit the ball, right?

• 25:13Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's the entire goal. So you want to fool the batter.

• 25:16Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you are using certain aerodynamic principles in your favor to help you fool the batter because the batter's brain sees it as just this, this, this object coming towards them that might do normal things that gravity would do to it. But you are now exploiting what the air could do, confusing my Newtonian expectations for the ball. Is that a fair characterization?

• 25:41Bill Nye?

  Sure. I just, DJ, how many times as a coach have you mentioned, okay, listen people, we want to confuse our Newtonian expectation?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  I'm gonna use that today.

• 25:54Bill Nye?

  It's just, it's an old baseball expression.

• 25:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Can you zoom me in for that one? Cause I want to see how that goes down.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  I can't wait to see how everybody looks back at me.

• 26:03Bill Nye?

  So.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  What? That's something new.

• 26:06Bill Nye?

  And so, uh, consider the following.

• 26:10Bill Nye?

  This is, these are pictures from one of my favorite books. An album of fluid motion, and you talk about fun. Anything that flows-

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was on the bestseller list recently, I saw it.

• 26:21Bill Nye?

  Yeah, sure it was. Uh, anything that flows is a fluid. So, here is a sphere in a fluid. Fluid's going by, it's a ball in water. And you see these pulses, pooh, pooh, pooh, pooh. It's shedding vortices, just like a whistle. Oh, you can't whistle on Zoom. Uh, it's shedding pu pu pu pulses. But if we affix a tripwire, this little wire, then you see how much more smooth the flow downstream is.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A tripwire to, to make texture to the surface.

• 26:59Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and what it does, the way I describe it, is it causes molecules to tumble. And when they tumble, they shear, they, they go past each other and their interaction changes and they flow more smoothly. So then, in the ultimate amazing ultativity of great amazingness. Whoa, whoa, whoa, where is it? Here we go. Um, we put a baseball in a wind tunnel with streams of smoke. And you see where the stitches, the stitch has tripped the boundary layer. It sticks to the ball much more smoothly. Where the stitch is downstream of the boundary layer of the, uh,

• 27:41Bill Nye?

  of the free stream, it causes the tumble. So this interaction of smoothness versus tumbling causes changes in pressure on each side of the ball. And it flies funny, and it's hard to hit. And pitchers and bowlers exploit this, they go crazy for this.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we have to assume that the inventors of baseball didn't have fluid dynamics in mind at the time. They just tried to stitch a fricking ball together. So what you're saying is that-

• 28:11Bill Nye?

  Oh, but they discovered the properties of this like that. My goodness.

• 28:15Gary O'Reilly?

  But what if, Neil? And I, I think we've had, uh, Meredith Wills, who's a physicist herself-

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 28:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Did a little bit of an investigation. And the thread they used in the stitches was, uh, something like ten or so percent thicker.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, she was accounting for the higher baseball, the higher home run. That's right. Rate. Yeah. Yes. So Bill, what's up with that?

• 28:39Bill Nye?

  Yeah. So different leagues are allowed to use different stitches.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 28:44Bill Nye?

  In general, the younger the players are, the higher the stitches.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean the more raised they are?

• 28:51Bill Nye?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, just, maybe that's absolutely true. The younger the players, the higher the stitches, the thicker the thread, which enables the pitchers to learn to use, to exploit this more readily. Then in the major league, the stitches get quite thin, and this demands more of the pitcher. He has to have more skill. And when I've hung out with these guys, and DJ, you must know more, they just walk around the clubhouse all day, snapping their fingers to get the strength. So they can.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  And just, and testing to see how the ball moves when they do it, too. So, you know, they can get different angles and, you know, they're trying new things all the time. Putting pressure on one finger will give you one effect. Putting pressure on another finger will give you another, a completely opposite effect, just like that. But you're also talking about length of fingers, you know, like, like Mariano Rivera, for example, had one finger that was longer.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Yankee, by the way.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  And he picked that up because one day, one of his coaches was telling him just to, you know, throw it with a little bit more pressure on another finger. And he was getting, he wasn't getting as much run. And then he told him, just throw it the way you want, you normally throw it. And then all of a sudden, his ball started running because he wasn't putting the pressure on the finger that was longer. And he was just using it, and it was staying on the ball longer, and then creates the best pitch in baseball, the cut fastball.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, what do you mean? He had a long finger. What, what?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Like, his finger was abnormally longer than most.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. You sound like he only has one finger. So which finger are you talking about?

• 30:25Speaker 02

  The fingers he puts on the ball. So he had two fingers on the ball. Is he, my, his, one finger, his middle finger may have been a little bit longer than most pitchers, which gives him.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he gets to stay in contact with the ball as it rolls out of his hand longer, and thereby give it a little extra push.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Right. And he gets, and that's where he got his cut fastball from. And it was just by accident.

• 30:47Bill Nye?

  DJ, tell us about the cut fastball.

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, what is that? It's relative to where like where you have release on the ball and pressure on the ball. So what we're doing is fastball is always over the top. All right, there's no, you're not trying to go to one side or the other side. You're trying to get over the top, but usually the fingers are close together. All right, and some guys throw it right down the middle where they have the, the, the small end of the, the horseshoe. Some guys put a little bit more curve on the, on the outside. All they're doing is throwing it, throwing it just like a fastball, but the ball would come off a little bit left or right. And it does.

• 31:23Gary O'Reilly?

  So DJ, is, am I right in saying that that is considered possibly, probably the most difficult thing of skill to execute in the world of sport?

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Based on Mariano Rivera, I would totally agree. Because he was, he was, he had. So that's what they call the cutter. That's what they call the cutter. He had two pitches. He had two pitches. He had a cutter and a fastball. And it was hard to dictate which one was coming because his release point was identical. So he always let go of the ball at a certain place. So that's where hitters are trying to get a little bit of a, an idea of where the ball's coming out based on release point, angles of the, the hand. What part of the hand you see? He always let go of his fastball like this. So he came over the top and off, but it depend on which pressure he had given more to that finger. And then the ball would run.

• 32:17Gary O'Reilly?

  You're not gonna, you're not gonna read that from the plate, are you?

• 32:20Speaker 02

  No, you don't read it until it's too late. And that's why he broke a massive amount of bats. I mean, like you would watch him and he would be breaking bats left and right because you're seeing fastball in your brain. And normally with breaking pitches and changeups and slower pitches, there's like a light that goes off, this emergency, hey, that's not the same. Stay back, right? So then you, you, you know, you, you fight it off, you do something different. But when his fastball was literally a mile per hour slower, I mean, his cut fastball was a mile per hour slower. You're registering that too late. And all of a sudden, it's, it goes from the middle of the plate to your knuckles. And you're now like, alright, if I don't get my hands in now, I'm going to get hurt.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Not, not even just like, am I gonna make contact? I'm, my life is in danger. I have to do something to stop it from happening. And, you know, guys were taking like crazy swings because they were just trying to fight it off. I mean, guys were going through bats, two, three bats in a bat. Wow. You know, because of that fastball. And that's what made him so devastating because the ball was going. It was an identical pitch, it was identical release point. But the last second is where you get that little cut, a little break. And it's hard to register if they're coming at the same speed.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, Bill, Bill, how, how can the ball do something different partway through the arc that it's taking? How's that even possible?

• 33:45Bill Nye?

  Well, so, uh, the description-

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ball doesn't just stop, I mean, there was a Bugs Bunny where-

• 33:52Gary O'Reilly?

  One of the all-time sporting legends.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where the pitcher throws like the slow ball. And the ball just kinda wiggles and, and jiggles and stops and continues. So that's of course a cartoon extreme of this, but um, is, is, is DJ describing something, an impression of what the ball's doing rather than what the ball's actually doing?

• 34:16Bill Nye?

  So, uh, to give credit where credit is due, Robert Adair, the physics of baseball, talked about this being the same phenomenon observed by two different people. So your point of view is what's producing this. So as the ball's coming toward the plate, not only is it, as soon as you let go of it, it's slowing down because of air, the air is slowing it down. But it's also falling. And so if you can get it to slow down and fall in a different way, by changing how fast it's going when it leaves your hand and changing where you aim it, it appears to the batter to be moving across the plate. But it's moving across the-

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, well said.

• 35:01Bill Nye?

  Uh, and so it's always doing that, it's just changing the rate at which it's doing that. And you guys, when you start getting in the most difficult thing ever in sports, I mean, I- I don't know, I watch hockey players do what baseball players do backwards and on ice skates, so I'm open minded.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, except, wait, wait, wait, Bill, most of the time the puck is on the ice. So that reduces one of the degrees of freedom of how and where you find it before you hit it. Whereas a ball being pitched can move in all dimensions.

• 35:32Bill Nye?

  Neil, it's the most of the time that makes it really difficult. No, modern players, modern hockey players lift the puck.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they lift the puck.

• 35:42Gary O'Reilly?

  But you're hitting a spherical object with a round bat.

• 35:46Bill Nye?

  So as the saying goes, you're a soccer player, the ball is round.

• 35:52Gary O'Reilly?

  I would use a larger surface area, a flatter area, whether it's the side of my foot, either outside or inside, or the instep. Which is a larger surface area to make contact with the ball.

• 36:05Bill Nye?

  But isn't it an old saying that the ball is round, anything can happen?

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me get to that just before we take a break, Bill. Give me like your most succinct comment on the, on what fraction of an inch, what a fraction of an inch difference contact with the ball makes.

• 36:25Bill Nye?

  Well, certainly.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the fate of the ball after it leaves the bat.

• 36:29Bill Nye?

  It's on the order of a few sheets of paper.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 36:32Bill Nye?

  Yeah. I mean, you're talking five or six thousandths of an inch, yeah. So, you know, you can, if you're a human, and a lot of your viewers are.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, sorry.

• 36:43Bill Nye?

  You can, you can feel the difference between two thousandths and four thousandths without much difficulty. But that much difference will make a tremendous difference in the flight of the ball.

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's an exaggeration to even say a fraction of an inch, it's even like a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of an inch.

• 37:00Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah. This is the charm, but think about this, people, this is something you always.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, but that means the big sluggers, the successful home run hitters, can, can decide in a fraction, a little fraction of a second, whether they're gonna swing. Swing a round stick, make contact with a round ball, and hit the ball 450 feet.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's spooky.

• 37:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, yeah, it's weird. But don't forget Neil, you're adding history of their one-to-one confrontations into the mix. Not just what's this guy dialing up in this moment? What has this guy dialed up to me in the past at certain moments in a match, in a game? So there's a whole lot, I mean DJ trashed me down on this one.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  There's a lot of educated guessing. You know, so it does come down to, they have books on everybody. Usually rookies have a good go the first couple of times through because they don't know.

• 38:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, knows them yet.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Doesn't know what the ball looks like when it comes off. You know, when you start getting used to seeing somebody throw a ball. And that's why nowadays, most starters don't make it through three rounds of nine. So they usually only go two, two and a half because by that time, that third time, I've seen him. I know what his pitch is, I know where he's throwing me, I know what he's trying, I know his plan. So, you know, like the good pitchers nowadays don't make it nine innings because of the fact that the hitters are actually, there's so much more, you know, math and they're coming in. They're, trust me, I'm not, I'm not trying, I'm an athlete as well. But they're not coming in going, I got it. And it's the fact that there are people down there actually giving them information, like books of it.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Like, hey, you just, you know, last time he got you out on this, watch for this first pitch. Okay, now I have, I'm looking curveball first pitch. I know curveball's coming if it's in my hitting zone. I'm going to take the best swing possible and see how hard I can hit this thing. You know, and that's, that's where.

• 38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you preload the, you preload the precision of what you're doing? And of course, even great home run hitters strike out more often than they hit a home run, so.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Right, because of the bad angle that they're taking, but that's besides the point. I think a lot of the guys are striking out now because of the bad angles and how they're changing it. Their, their, their degrees of upward swing is changing how.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Consistent people are hitting the ball. Um, so I, and I don't, I don't know why. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, back when I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, it was, you know, 300 was the, was it. You wanted to bat 300. Now you've got guys that are in the lineups batting 217 with 40 home runs and they're, all right, well, he's, he's a home run and every kid wants to be him. But what about the guy that's batting 340, like a DJ LeMahieu, you know, that he hits the ball out of place, but then he hits a little dribble up the middle, scores two runs and everybody's like, well, he could have hit it out, you know, but he didn't. You know, like that, that's not baseball. I mean,

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's a whole other influence going on there. Yeah. So when we come back, more StarTalk Sports Edition, The Physics of Baseball with Bill Nye.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition, The Physics of Baseball. Got my longtime friend, Bill Nye, who thinks, if you didn't know this, this man thinks and breathes baseball. He's, he's a student of baseball, as we might say. And I also brought in someone from the trenches, DJ Price, a former trainer of mine who moved to Florida to coach baseball. In fact, he coached while he was here in New York. And so he knows some insides and outs. And each of you are here to keep each other honest about what you say about the sport. But I want to take this segment and start thinking about, um, the air, the texture of the air, the humidity in the air,

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the air pressure. And how do these other factors, these climatic factors, influence either the pitch, the hit, the fielders? And so, Bill, what can you tell me about, so humidity in baseball?

• 41:23Bill Nye?

  Well, uh, consider the following. Uh, air is mostly nitrogen and nitrogen is what, everyone? Diatomic. Exactly. So it has, nitrogen travels, I concur.

• 41:37Bill Nye?

  Nitrogen travels around with two nitrogen molecules hooked together.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And two, you got it.

• 41:43Bill Nye?

  And so I guess two in Greek is di, so diatomic. Deuce, it's Latin, deuce, deos, that was two, alright. So that means there's seven protons, seven neutrons. You're, that's fourteen atomic units for, mass units for each atom. And you end up at twenty-eight.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you have two atoms.

• 42:08Bill Nye?

  Two atoms. H2O, oxygen's eight. That's sixteen atomic mass units each there. And then just one atomic mass unit with hydrogen. The air is less dense.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, you're not, I mean, just, I don't, I hate to be sort of pedantic about it.

• 42:29Bill Nye?

  Bill, you're talking so fast about it.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not, you're displacing it rather than replacing it. Because that other molecule is still there somewhere.

• 42:37Bill Nye?

  Oh, yes. It's in another part of North America.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, exactly.

• 42:41Bill Nye?

  Or Venezuela, yes.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it wedged its way in to create the humidity.

• 42:45Bill Nye?

  On a humid day.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now so what?

• 42:47Bill Nye?

  On a humid day, some water molecules are nudging aside some nitrogen molecules. Well, they're nudging aside some argon and xenon and all these other happy molecules, but, or atoms in some cases. But water molecules are less massive than nitrogen molecules. And most of air is nitrogen, seventy percent or so. So when a ball is going through the air that's humid, it's pushing aside atoms that are less massive. It has, it can travel faster and farther through a humid air day than a cold, dry day. And this is so not trivial.

• 43:30Bill Nye?

  This is so noticeable in baseball, especially, and cricket especially, where you're hitting a ball and it's flying at a hundred miles an hour, pushing aside air molecules. If they're less massive, it goes farther.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, and now that seems like, if we follow this line of reasoning, that if you go to a mile-high stadium where there's just simply less air,

• 43:54Bill Nye?

  Right.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  because air pressure is lower, that doubles down on this effect, presumably.

• 43:58Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's a true fact, not a false fact, as I whimsically remark.

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you should be able to plot home runs per altitude of stadium, and it should go up.

• 44:07Gary O'Reilly?

  So Coors Field in Denver, right?

• 44:09Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Gary O'Reilly?

  The home of the Rockies. They, I think, oh, it's the beginning of the 21st century, introduced a humidor, the sort of thing you have for your cigars.

• 44:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, all my cigars are in a humidor.

• 44:22Gary O'Reilly?

  They do. So that then, because of the yarn inside the ball, allows the yarn to absorb a little more moisture and therefore kind of damps it down? Is that, is that the thinking there?

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, what you're saying, they put the ball in a humidor, not the stadium in a humidor?

• 44:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Correct.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, it's a rather large humidor if you start with stadium. So, Bill, right, the humidity affects, gets into everything. So if I have a crisp ball moving through humid air, I get it. But if my ball is kind of mushy because it sat in a humid environment, then what?

• 44:56Bill Nye?

  So the ball doesn't go off the bat as strongly, as fast. The, uh, the height it would bounce.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this, so it's a mitigating, it's a mitigating factor on the humidity that would otherwise make it go farther.

• 45:08Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah. So when the Rockies first started playing, it was just home run, home run, home run. Long hit, long hit, long hit. But they had this innovation. They'd get the balls humid, and it slows them down a little bit.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is that? Why do they want to do that?

• 45:24Bill Nye?

  So.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody likes home runs.

• 45:27Bill Nye?

  Well, the, the game became complicated in that you, all the strategy, all the tactics that a pitcher, where infielders would stand, the batter's approach to the ball, everything was changed. By the ball traveling so much farther, swinging it about as hard. Also, the pitchers had much more difficulty causing the ball to curve or change, but then they could throw it faster. So, these two things. So, the thing about baseball that everybody's kooky for is every pitch is a statistic. Every pitch is a datum in the great pantheon of baseball record keeping. I don't know if that's a pantheon, the great record books of record keeping. And so, they

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anals.

• 46:11Bill Nye?

  Anals. They made adjustments to make the statistics more meaningful when you're playing in Denver. And, you know, people, when, when you play baseball

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what you're saying. Otherwise, it's just a free for all.

• 46:26Bill Nye?

  Well, the word free for all, it, it changes the statistics for the home team, it changes the statistics, statistics for the visiting team, in a way

• 46:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the Yankees had all these great left-handed sluggers, and they made the right field fence 296 feet. So, that's, so how many Babe Ruth home runs dropped in at 298 feet on the right field line? Wait, wait. DJ, do you guys actively know that humid air, the ball goes farther when you hit it? Is that an actively known thing?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  It's not something that, that I'm thinking from a scientific perspective, but I'd rather hit a baseball in June and July than in September and October. That much I do know.

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. So, somehow it's in the psychology of what you would, okay. It's worked its way into you.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  I always say baseball players are probably the, the smartest physicists that don't know it. Because, because we're always thinking about stuff like that, but we don't know what we're thinking about from a scientific perspective.

• 47:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because naively, you would think, you know, humid air is heavy and that, and you're thinking, but Bill Nye just explained that away, right? It's not a matter of

• 47:32Speaker 02

  It's a different, when you, when you hit a ball in October and September, late September, in the north, it, it's uncomfortable. And, you know, it doesn't feel the same way in July. And most of the places you go to in July and June, it's pretty hot. So, you know, like, I used to love coming down here.

• 47:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reggie Jackson, Mr. October was such a significant, it was more than just it's, it's World Series season, it's October.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the air is, is, the air is, is cold and crisp and, and all that goes with the autumn.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a different game. I mean, and that even like, you know, looking from a west coast, east coast kind of thing, you know, that even down south in Florida, I mean, uh, we would come down here for, for spring training when, uh, from New York and it was like, oh, wow. You just feel it. The ball's gonna go further. It's gonna, you're gonna throw it a little harder. You're gonna run a little faster.

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just feel it. So you're, you're the, you're the unsuspecting physicist, just like you said. That's great. I love that. So, so Gary, offline, you were telling us you had a question about, about, uh, global warming affecting this. Why don't you, why don't you hand that to Bill?

• 48:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, Bill. So we've, we've seen record temperatures in Death Valley this year, something like 130 plus Fahrenheit.

• 48:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I think we should build a stadium in Death Valley, which is very, very high air pressure because it's very, uh, it's very low elevation and then curveballs would be amazing.

• 48:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, there might be a problem in the field.

• 48:55Bill Nye?

  Yeah. And also, you know, the game depends, not this year, but generally on fans coming to the stadium.

• 49:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And if it's 105 degrees, that's another drawback. I get that. But holding aside those complications, that would be a curveball thrower's dream.

• 49:12Bill Nye?

  The ball player from 20 No. Palms, 29 guys. So, uh, yeah, as the world gets warmer, the air gets warmer and less dense and we will expect the ball to go farther.

• 49:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Bill, as the world gets warmer, uh, warmer air is thinner.

• 49:28Bill Nye?

  Right. There's fewer molecules per cubic meter or what have you.

• 49:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. A. And B, if the world gets warmer, we are evaporating more moisture and keeping more moisture in the air.

• 49:40Bill Nye?

  Gets more humid.

• 49:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it true that the air on, in general would be more humid?

• 49:45Bill Nye?

  Yeah. I mean, that's my certainly first cut at it. That's what I would expect. Yeah.

• 49:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So we have two reasons why in a, uh, global warmed earth, baseball will have more home runs.

• 50:00Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah. And more extra base hits and also higher pitch speeds. And the faster the pitcher throws it and you make contact, the farther the ball would go.

• 50:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you make contact.

• 50:14Bill Nye?

  Let the pitcher do the work.

• 50:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Many of us have seen sort of strobe photos of a golf ball getting hit. And you see the golf ball collapsing and then recoiling. Do you know how much a baseball? I remember when I was a kid and I unraveled the baseball. It was, it was, it was one of the happiest moments of my life. I said, wow, I just discovered that there's like rubber inside. And then there's a little, there's like a candy thing in the center. You know, it was just this.

• 50:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Like a curtsy roll.

• 50:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A curtsy roll pop, right, exactly. I felt like I was the first person discovering this. And do you know how much a baseball deforms?

• 50:50Bill Nye?

  So the ball compresses a surprising amount. Like, imagine if you could grip a baseball and squeeze it with your index finger and middle finger. So that your index and middle finger were fully submerged in the surface of the ball. That's about how much it compresses. It's really surprising.

• 51:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So part of the distance is, is the ball restoring to its shape? So the ball is, in a way, propelling itself in the aftermath of that collapse.

• 51:21Bill Nye?

  Well, when you jump off a trampoline, is, is the trampoline propelling you or is it you? Well, the answer is both. You're storing energy in the ball and the ball.

• 51:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the springs of the trampoline.

• 51:32Gary O'Reilly?

  So how long does it take? What sort of timeline are we looking at here? From impact, deformation, and then returning to its original shape?

• 51:39Bill Nye?

  About a thousandth of a second.

• 51:40Gary O'Reilly?

  That long?

• 51:41Bill Nye?

  There, yeah, not a hundredth, much less, I mean, way less than that.

• 51:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it were a hundredth of a second, Gary, I think you would see that in their high-speed replays.

• 51:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 51:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A thousandth of a second, it's not catching that.

• 51:56Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 51:56Gary O'Reilly?

  It has to return quite quickly because it won't fly, obviously, as well.

• 52:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, the act of returning off the surface of the bat, it gives it, propels it forward, like, like Bill said, is the impulse, which is a physics term.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  They've shown some pictures of that, like, of, of contact, where, where the ball gets deformed and almost, you know, envelopes itself over the bat, it's, it's wild.

• 52:18Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's really surprising.

• 52:20Gary O'Reilly?

  What sort of velocities are we talking about, DJ, for a bat? If, if we've got a real power hitter, what sort of speed is this bat meeting the ball?

• 52:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me ask that another way. If the ball leaves the bat at 105 miles an hour, does that mean I hit the ball at 105 miles an hour? Is my bat moving at 105? Can, can the ball go faster than the speed with which I swung the bat?

• 52:42Speaker 02

  That's, that's a, that's a question for Bill.

• 52:45Bill Nye?

  No, yeah, yeah, so the famous, you know this from a famous, wonderful, science teacher demonstration, you get a basketball and a tennis ball, and, uh...

• 52:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the double bump.

• 52:58Bill Nye?

  The double bump.

• 52:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it.

• 53:00Bill Nye?

  Yes, so go ahead, Neil, describe it to the listener.

• 53:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  May I? No, but you started it, but I'd, I would, I would so delight in describing this. Okay, so if, and we have, we've actually had to calculate this in physics class, because it's, the result is unbelievable. You see it, and you say, "I don't believe it," and then you calculate it, and then the calculation shows that's what must happen. If you take a large ball and a small ball on top of it, okay? So, the, the large ball has to be much bigger than the small ball. So, it could be a bas- basketball and like a, a marble, or a...

• 53:31Bill Nye?

  Well, a marble's pretty good, but you can use a, a, a baseball, or you can use a...

• 53:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a baseball, it's fine.

• 53:37Bill Nye?

  A tennis ball is a traditional thing.

• 53:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something much bigger than that ball. So, take a basketball and a, and a, and a baseball, sure. And, so, drop one by itself, and it'll come up to a certain height. Drop the other by itself, it'll come up to a certain height. Take the smaller ball... Hold it just above the big ball and drop them simultaneously.

• 53:59Bill Nye?

  The other traditional thing is a little strip of double stick tape or a loop, a loop of tape. So that the ball is, as you drop it, it stays, kind of stays.

• 54:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so there they are. As they drop, what happens is the bottom ball hits first, recoils off the ground, goes upward and hits the small ball, which is itself coming in, and then doubling back off of its own recoil as well as the basketball's recoil. And it goes up nine times as high.

• 54:31Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so the-

• 54:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It goes through the roof.

• 54:32Bill Nye?

  Wow. The traditional thing is a basketball and tennis ball. And so the basketball is so much more massive than the tennis ball. When its momentum is transferred to the tennis ball, it becomes, it changes into this, oh, red. It is manifested as a high change in speed of the tennis ball.

• 54:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's basically launched.

• 54:55Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 54:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It goes 50 feet in the air. I mean, it's a striking experiment that you do.

• 55:01Bill Nye?

  Pun intended.

• 55:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In beginning physics. Okay, so I like that.

• 55:06Bill Nye?

  Well, the baseball, you guys, is all so-called classical physics. There's no-

• 55:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I said, Newtonian physics, and you got all mad at me for saying that.

• 55:15Bill Nye?

  I didn't really get mad. I just, if you're a baseball coach, I don't know how much people respond to-

• 55:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm using all of this today, all of it. All right, guys, we've got to land this plane. Thank you, Bill Nye. Do you still go by Science Guy, or is that an occasional moniker?

• 55:31Bill Nye?

  Yes, it's trademarked, people. Don't make me come over there.

• 55:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me?

• 55:36Bill Nye?

  Thank you, Gary, DJ, Neil. Thanks for having me on.

• 55:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're all here. Gary, always good to have you, coach. Pleasure, man. DJ, it's great to have you back on this. Yeah, man, it's good seeing you again. I hope you enjoy Florida. I am, but it's great. Crazy people, we all agree, crazy people. Stay well, DJ. Playing a lot of golf. It's very enjoyable here. You got it. All right, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, bidding you to keep looking up.