Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Things You Thought You Knew – The Fast and The Friction About this episode What is the Magnus Effect? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore physics through spin, banking, and angular momentum. Why are race tracks banked?
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. You're a personal astrophysicist. Got with me my two co-hosts, Gary O'Reilly. Gary?
0:22 Chuck Nice? Hi Neil.
0:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. Always good to have you guys here. And Chuck Nice, of course.
0:27 Chuck Nice? Hey, hey, hey. What's happening, guys?
0:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I, just to be clear, I engaged in high school and intercollegiate athletics. Gary was a professional soccer player in the UK. And Chuck, you've done no organized sports?
0:41 Chuck Nice? I have watched sports, sir.
0:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. You've watched organized sports?
0:45 Chuck Nice? And I have also thrown several Super Bowl parties, which is organizing sports.
0:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's, that counts. So this counts. All right.
0:53 Chuck Nice? That's right.
0:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's why we have you on here. So what we're gonna do this episode is have some things you thought you knew, or maybe things you didn't think you knew. And this is a spinoff of very successful format from our StarTalk flagship podcast. And so we're gonna do three different topics that you might have thought you knew about, but maybe you didn't. Are you guys okay with that?
1:20 Chuck Nice? We're good. Oh, yeah.
1:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's do it. So I wanna lead off with something in baseball called the rising fastball.
1:27 Chuck Nice? Uh-huh.
1:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The rising fastball. Very hard to hit. Very hard to hit. Because you see the ball coming in, and you're ready to swing for it, and you always swing underneath it. And because you think it's gonna be somewhere where it isn't, of course, that's the whole point of what the pitcher's trying to do. The whole point is to fool the batter in whatever way they can. But I just wanted to focus in this particular moment on the rising fastball. So, the batter describes the ball as rising. Rising up from whatever, wherever they saw they thought it was gonna be. And, but, of course, gravity doesn't work that way.
2:07 Chuck Nice? Unless, unless the pitcher is a Jedi.
2:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gravity doesn't work that way. And old timers among us, old timer Americans, so Gary might not know this, back in the 1970s, they lowered the height of the pitcher's mound.
2:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To give a better advantage to the batters.
2:25 Chuck Nice? Right.
2:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I forgot how much was it six, it's just a few inches and.
2:30 Gary O'Reilly? Why don't you just get shorter pitchers?
2:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be the same effect.
2:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know who was short was the pitcher for the Red Sox, Pedro. What was his last name? I just knew him as Pedro. Pedro Martinez?
2:44 Chuck Nice? Martinez, Martinez, yes.
2:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was, he was relatively short for pitchers. For as good a pitcher as he was, and you're thinking you gotta be tall to have the good sort of arm angle and all of this. So, so pitchers, so. So, Gary, you want short pitchers, but they're not easy to come by, right? Uh, you know, they, they, they, some of the most dominating pitchers have all been tall.
3:08 Chuck Nice? Randy Johnson.
3:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Randy Johnson among them.
3:11 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, he was a giant. Imagine, you think about the length of lever that they're able to bring to a pitch. And then you've got the vertical aspect and him stood on a mound, even if you know it.
3:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
3:23 Chuck Nice? He showed, he showed up for practice. They were like, you're in the wrong sport, man.
3:28 Chuck Nice? You're in the wrong, you're in the wrong sport. The, the basketball court's that way.
3:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then they found out he couldn't jump, so I said, okay, you stay, you stay right where you are.
3:37 Gary O'Reilly? Do you remember seeing that video of him pitching? And he completely vaporized a pigeon that flew across the path.
3:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, I saw that. A pigeon flew across and there was nothing left of the pigeon. That's, that's a, now that was, I mean, if you had to die, you know, a Randy Johnson fastball, completely obliterating your.
3:57 Gary O'Reilly? What are the chances of that actually happening?
4:01 Chuck Nice? Whatever those chances are, he, he nails it.
4:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It happened.
4:03 Chuck Nice? It happened. I tell you, and, and listen, that pigeon is more famous than the Sully, Captain Sully Sullenberger geese, that's for sure.
4:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, right. Yeah, there's basically, no, birds are not sturdy objects, right? They have to be light enough to fly. Their bones are very fragile. The bones are basically hollow.
4:24 Gary O'Reilly? They have to be hollow, yeah.
4:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, otherwise they'd be, um, so if you take the energy of a Randy Johnson fastball and ask what happens when you deposit that much energy into a pigeon, there's basically no pigeon left.
4:38 Chuck Nice? You have a, you have a feathered pillow. That's what you.
4:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, that's right, it's a pillow.
4:41 Chuck Nice? You've got some feathers for a pillow. That's it. That's all that's left.
4:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, getting back to the rising fastball. So.
4:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So here's the point. So in the 1970s, they lowered the mound, I think it was the 70s. Yep, they lowered the mound to bring some advantage back to the batter. So that the pitcher's not towering over you, plus with their fully outstretched arm, and they're pitching sort of down to you, all right, rather than straight at you. All right, so that helped a little bit. But like you said, Gary, you know, a shorter pitcher would have had the same effect as lowering the mound. So, so what it did, it put shorter pitchers at a disadvantage, okay, relative to taller pitchers where they didn't even make a difference.
5:22 Chuck Nice? Right.
5:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, make a long story short, as you know, you can put a spin on a ball, and as long as the ball is thrown through an atmosphere, such as what we have on Earth, then the arc of the ball will veer from what would be normal to the force of gravity, from what you'd expect, given purely the force of gravity acting on the object. Which is why you cannot have curveballs on the moon.
5:52 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
5:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It will not work, okay? You cannot have rising fastballs on the moon. It will not work. All of these trajectory adjustments that are happening en route between the pitcher's release point and the catcher and the batter, which is a little less than 60 feet, right? Because the pitcher's arm is forward of the pitching rubber, and it's the pitching rubber that's 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. So, it's really, you're talking about 58 feet, something, however, wherever their arm is at the point of release. So, and then of course, the batter only has a fraction of a second to decide. So, a lot of the batter's
6:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? decision has to be, I don't want to call it intuitive, but it has to be what their native understanding of gravity is going to be, or their understanding of the pitcher. Some combination of the two. Okay, so, if you spin the ball...
6:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? With a backspin, so the top of the ball is spinning back towards you, okay? We'll call that a backspin.
6:56 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
6:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because for every backspin, there's a part of the ball that's moving forward. Okay, so you have to be, you have to specify what the top of the ball is doing. So if you throw the ball where the top of the ball has backspin, that will create a difference in air pressure between the bottom and the top of the ball.
7:13 Gary O'Reilly? Mm-hmm.
7:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, because the air moving across the top and the bottom has different speeds relative to the surface of the ball.
7:22 Gary O'Reilly? So it speeds up, slows down, speeds up, slows down.
7:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, well, no, but, but, yeah, it is rotating, but only one side of the ball will feel the same constant extra force, okay? Either it's constant more force or constant less force, alright? So I'm part of the ball, I'm going over the top. The top of the ball is spinning back towards the pitcher, okay?
7:43 Gary O'Reilly? Mm-hmm.
7:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the, and the air is moving in that same direction across the top of the ball.
7:48 Gary O'Reilly? Mm-hmm.
7:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the, so the relative speed between this top surface of the ball and the air moving across it, the difference between them is less than the bottom of the ball that's moving towards the batter. Okay, the bottom of the ball is moving towards the batter and the air is coming back across. So in one case, you add the spin speed to the ball speed, in the other case, you subtract it. And that difference creates a pressure difference between the top and the bottom. If you do that side to side, it'll move the ball left to right.
8:19 Gary O'Reilly? Mm-hmm, yeah.
8:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Pure and simple.
8:22 Gary O'Reilly? We use these same techniques in soccer. When, when you kick underneath or to the side or slightly over the top.
8:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
8:30 Gary O'Reilly? That spin, that sort of magnet.
8:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The, the Magnus effect, which, correct. That's what, that's, it's been so named. And so, um, so if you spin it backwards,
8:41 Gary O'Reilly? Mm-hmm.
8:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? the ball will not descend as fast as gravity would otherwise take it.
8:49 Gary O'Reilly? Mm-hmm.
8:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It still descends, but just not as fast, okay? So you're there saying, okay, it's a regular fastball. I know how much it's gonna drop between the bat, the pitcher's arm and when it crosses. So I'm gonna swing where I know it will be. And that that spin that the pitcher put on it kept the ball higher than it otherwise would and generally you swing under the ball or you'll pop it up. And so, so if you look at the arc of the ball side to side, you will see the ball sinks. It does sink, just not as much as the batter thinks it will.
9:26 Gary O'Reilly? Do you remember a conversation we had with Ron Darling, the former Mets pitcher?
9:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
9:32 Gary O'Reilly? Who's a TV commentator? And he was explaining to us how he would set certain hitters up for certain pitches later on in the game or later on in the season, like he would throw some junk at them. So as he thought that they thought that that was going to be the case. And I think if you're going to throw this rising fastball, you have to set that hitter up earlier on in the game.
9:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
9:54 Gary O'Reilly? So so you can bring that deception and disguise.
9:57 Chuck Nice? So you're messing with their expecta- messing with their expectations.
10:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So throw a regular fastball that's kind of a crappy regular fastball, so he doesn't want to swing at it, but he sees the arc and says, yeah, okay, that's your fastball. I got this. We'll put one over the middle and and see what I'll do with your fastball.
10:16 Chuck Nice? That's supposed to be the reason why you step out of the batter's box altogether. When people think, why does it take so long for, you know?
10:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A baseball game to unfold, yes.
10:25 Chuck Nice? To unfold. You know, it's like, I got here Tuesday and I miss work. I miss work. I, you know, I'm still here, but the reason why I step out of the batter's box is because a lot of hitting is perception. And the idea is to clear your perception of the last pitch and hopefully any other pitches that you might have in mind. And you walk out of the batter's batter's box and you're supposed to take your gaze away from the mound and all.
10:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And now you're fresh.
10:59 Chuck Nice? This stuff actually has a purpose. It's not like superstition. It looks like these guys are being superstitious because a lot of times they'll add their own little, you know, routines and rituals to it.
11:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But yeah, but Chuck, growing up, game, long games lasted two hours and many games lasted an hour forty. And now short games last two hours and they all last three hours. So I think advertisers.
11:22 Chuck Nice? I was gonna say, you forgot about commercials.
11:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yo, step out of the box. We need more commercial time. Good. So, so, so what you might do is mix up a rising fastball with a sinking fastball, right? So now, now that you think you got my rising fastball figured out, I now throw a fastball that's spinning the other direction and now the force on it pushes it down rather than up. And then you see, you've seen this because the centerfield camera picks it up. The ball comes, looks like it's coming straight at the batter and the bottom drops out of it. And the catcher practically catches it on the ground and the batter just swings over it and they've got it. So, the point is, in a rising fastball, nothing rises.
12:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It simply doesn't fall as fast as your, as your psychology and your understanding of gravity would otherwise have you believe.
12:13 Chuck Nice? Ha ha!
12:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which, which, which in a way makes a, which in a way makes a curve ball maybe a little easier because you're not, it's, it's not moving against gravity, it's just moving left to right, or it's, it's got some arc that maybe started sort of follow the arc, you know, but with all, all good pitches are hard to hit. So, I don't want to jump in there and say I could do any better than the dude that just struck out.
12:38 Chuck Nice? Well, you know, they, some pitchers do the same thing though with an off-speed pitch. So, it's like, you just, it's the same exact pitch, you just don't throw it as hard, you, you throw it at chuck speed, like, eh!
12:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck speed, chuck speed, a chuck speed pitch.
12:55 Chuck Nice? It's called the chuck speed pitch. You know what I mean? First you blaze them with a 91 mile an hour, blaze them again, and then the second one is like, eh! And they're like, oh, what the hell just happened?
13:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. So, uh, but you should know that the faster you spin it, the bigger is the Magnus effect. Okay? So, because the difference in the relative speeds of the air moving across the ball's surface becomes greater and greater. And so, uh, the, some of the best pitchers, when they say, boy, they got a lot of movement on that ball. It's because of how quickly they actually spin the ball as it releases from their, from their hand.
13:35 Gary O'Reilly? But this is, isn't that when the hitters reach the, the stitching? And they read the the road, the speed of rotation because they can tell from the stitching whether it's blurred, whether there's certain things coming, what kind of pitch, and they've learnt to read the stitching.
13:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, if you're good.
13:51 Gary O'Reilly? If you're in the majors, you're gonna be decent, right?
13:54 Speaker 03 Who's the batter? Spiderman, who is batting here?
13:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who's counting the stitches?
14:00 Chuck Nice? Oh my god, I only saw six stitches go by.
14:03 Speaker 03 Whoa.
14:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So anyhow, I just wanted to sort of reinforce the value of a spinning ball, no matter whether it's a fastball or any other kind of pitch. If it's spinning, the pressure differences will move it in ways that give the pitcher amazing control and deceptive power over the batter. Lastly, how about the knuckleball? So the knuckleball does not spin, okay? Now, when you see that ball come in, you can see, you can see that, that there's not, it's not spinning, all right? You just see, now, the problem there is, if the ball is not spinning, it is not stabilised as it moves through the air.
14:46 Gary O'Reilly? Yes.
14:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the slightest...
14:48 Speaker 03 I don't know what I'm going to do.
14:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're unstable, no, not emotionally unstable.
14:52 Speaker 03 Jesus Christ, how many times can this happen? You throw me, he throws me back, I can't take it anymore. I just...
15:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, the ball, last I checked, experiences no emotions, right?
15:09 Chuck Nice? Oh, okay. That, that kind of stability.
15:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So yeah, rotational stability.
15:15 Chuck Nice? Rotational stability.
15:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So as it moves towards you, it's not rotationally stable against the air it's moving through, and so a slight breeze will just carry the ball to a different place.
15:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so for a knuckleball, especially the catcher, they don't know where the ball's gonna end up. And a knuckleball is useless on a day where there's no breeze. Okay? Then it'll just go in a straight arc.
15:41 Chuck Nice? That's a meatball.
15:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, if it's kinda breezy inside the stadium and sometimes it cooks around. You can look at the flags, but that doesn't tell you, because those are up above the level, right, of the top of the stadium. So this circulating air can be the knuckleballer's best friend. And many knuckleballers are famous for throwing wild pitches or having passed balls, because the batter doesn't know where the, I mean, the catcher doesn't know where to put the mitt as the ball moves around. So that is the absence of a spin, also creating movement, because we don't have a spin stabilized situation. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, more Things You Thought You Knew. T K Y K. Did I get all the letters there? Maybe.
16:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? T Y K Y K. Things You Thought You Knew on StarTalk Sports Edition. We'll be right back.
16:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. Things You Thought You Knew, or maybe you do know and didn't know enough, or knew and you want to hear it again, or never knew, or never thought you knew or even cared. Okay.
16:54 Chuck Nice? And now you know the real title.
16:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I saw the full title.
16:58 Chuck Nice? That's the full title, people.
17:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The full title.
17:01 Chuck Nice? That's the full title.
17:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So for this segment, I want to talk about lipouts in golf. And, you know, I see golf. I'm not a golf player, you know? I just always imagine the conversation between a golfer and a baseball player, right? And just how that would go by. So the baseball player says, "So, you want complete silence when you hit the ball?" I say, "Yeah, we need silence." And they say, "Well, how fast is the ball moving?" "Well, not at all. It's stationary." "Well, where is it?" "Oh, it's right between my feet."
17:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, and so you need silence for that takes concentration. Well, how about you? Oh, well, our ball is moving 90 miles an hour. Thrown by someone who doesn't want me to hit it.
17:52 Chuck Nice? While I'm being booed.
17:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? While 50,000 people are screaming at you. So that, to me, that's, that, that's a fascinating sort of exchange. That may, I don't know, should we have more of those or fewer of those? I don't know. But what we all know is that certain golf, typically a putt, but any, it can happen on any, on any shot. The ball will hit the rim of the cup and then spiral around and pop out. Frustrating for the golfer because that's a lost shot right there.
18:26 Chuck Nice? It's a stroke off.
18:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a stroke off.
18:32 Chuck Nice? That's a loss of a, loss of a stroke.
18:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, thank you.
18:35 Gary O'Reilly? We'll go with drop, dropped shot, shall we?
18:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dropped shot. But so it's, uh, so what's interesting about it is it can happen almost no matter how far away you are from the cup. I've, it's, there's some, there are good videos of compilations of lip outs where some guy was like a couple of feet away and he taps it in, but it lips out. And then everyone says, oh, and then he just goes around a little cocky, said, you're going in this time, bop, lips out again. And so he lost two strokes when the ball was, was within two feet of the cup.
19:07 Chuck Nice? I think they call that, you suck.
19:12 Chuck Nice? I'm pretty sure that's the golfing term.
19:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the official.
19:15 Chuck Nice? Official golfing term.
19:16 Gary O'Reilly? I mean, if anyone's watched Caddyshack, the movie, they know it's a gopher in the hole that's pushing the ball.
19:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The gopher, I forgot about the gopher. The gopher's at fault for all of it, yes. So, so here's what's going on. You, you think you're hitting the ball straight and you are, and so the ball has, has what we call linear momentum. So it's momentum in the direction it's headed.
19:41 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
19:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? However, if you do not hit the ball exactly towards the center of the cup.
19:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it sees the rim of the cup.
19:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's like you reaching out to like a maypole as you're trying to run by it, grabbing it, and what happens to you?
20:00 Chuck Nice? Ooh, you get to swing around.
20:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You swing around. So all of a sudden, your linear momentum, okay, what you think is purely linear momentum also manifests as angular momentum around the pole. Okay, so that happens, you reach out and grab. So when the ball sees the depression in the cup, that's effectively falling towards the middle of the cup. And so there's angular momentum there that is getting picked up as it goes around the center. And depending on how fast the ball is moving and how much on the lip it was, it'll either swivel and go in or swivel and pop out again. And so the only way to avoid this on every single shot is hit it directly to the center of the cup.
20:46 Gary O'Reilly? Does it also?
20:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's all, to the center of the cup and it drops in.
20:51 Gary O'Reilly? Does it matter on how much, is there a critical mass of the ball that must be below the lip of the cup?
20:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, very good point. So, so I'd have to do a calculation on this. But I would say if you got half the mass of the ball below the lip, that it's going in.
21:07 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
21:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's, and because it's very, it's, it's very hard to, to all of a sudden have a force vector pointing upwards while this is happening. By the way, unless the ball's spinning.
21:20 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
21:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, depending on which way the ball is spinning, if it's spinning, it can actually crawl out if that's the direction the spin is going.
21:26 Chuck Nice? That happens in basketball where you see the ball ring around.
21:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, in basketball, lip outs are every third shot, right? I mean, when you think about it.
21:34 Chuck Nice? Yeah, rings around and then it comes, it gets thrown out. It's actually in the hole. You know, it's in the cylinder.
21:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I haven't seen it. Find me one where it's half already in the cylinder.
21:45 Chuck Nice? Oh, oh, God, yeah.
21:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't think it.
21:48 Chuck Nice? Oh, come on now, yes. I don't think more than half, but definitely it's in the cylinder, yeah.
21:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Up to half. Oh, yeah, okay, totally be in there. But it's touching the side, and depending on the spin, the, the, the internal angular momentum the ball had by your shot, that'll affect what it's gonna do as it kisses the rim. All right. And so some shooters will give a backspin when they hit the back of the rim. So then the spin takes it in with that much more vigor. But if you, if you have different spins and you hit the rim in the wrong way, it's gonna spin in a way you don't want, you're not gonna make the shot. So the same is true in golf. And in golf, you know, the spin on the ball matters, right? For so many of those shots, particularly ones that are onto the green, you don't want it to keep moving and rolling off the green. So so many of them have backspin.
22:34 Gary O'Reilly? Bunker shots, Neil. If you, if you found yourself in a sand trap, you've got to get right underneath the ball, flatten the face of the club, and then you impart the backspin on it so as it doesn't overrun on a, on a far screen and then will spin and drop and then that will be the rotation.
22:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly. And, and, and golfers are excellent navigators of subtleties in terrain. So that if you're gonna do a backspin, you're gonna do it on a.
23:00 Chuck Nice? On the high side.
23:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the high side, so then it rolls back down. So you're gonna think this through. Well, you'll do it even if it goes low, right? You especially need it if it goes low, because you don't want it to then roll off and go into the, into the pond or, or into the brush. So all I'm saying is that the only way to avoid it is to send it straight in.
23:19 Gary O'Reilly? So remind me again, why, why when it, it looks like it's going to go in, it rises up? What is elevating that for it to lip out and not lip down?
23:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, yeah, so what you're saying is it's already partly in the cup. So what's it doing? So it has so much momentum, right? The question is, how's that momentum gonna manifest? Okay? And so as it comes, so let's say you lip left to right and out, it goes in. So what's actually happening is it's almost like the bank.
23:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of the track in NASCAR.
23:57 Gary O'Reilly? Oh.
23:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, think about that. So, so here I am in a car. And if I'm driving too fast on that bank. Okay, I can tell you now, if you drive 300 miles an hour into a bank. I don't think the rubber in the road is going to hold you to the bank. And it looks like, yo, you should just fall into the middle. You're just gonna fall in. No, you're gonna fly right out, headed the other direction on the other side of the track.
24:22 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, so we're imparting that theory into a golf ball as to why it raises or rises out of.
24:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct, correct, because when you're in a car and you're on a bank, you feel this force sort of pushing you outward, right, depending on how fast you hit that bank. And that, in fact, that's what helps keep you on the track, provided you don't take the turn too fast. So, so all we're saying here is that on that turn, if you have enough momentum, then that momentum will continue to carry. And the fact that the ball was a little bit in won't matter. Because it's, it's, it's seeing the, because, by the way, it's not in the cup when that happens. It's on the part of the grass that bends in.
25:05 Gary O'Reilly? It's on the lip, yeah.
25:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's on a lip, and on that lip, it's not a perfect 90 degrees, right? It's like, it's a
25:11 Chuck Nice? It's a small, tiny little bank.
25:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tiny little bank. It's a tiny little bank between the grass and the turf and where the cup begins. And that's the bank where this thing flies out on.
25:19 Chuck Nice? Now, if, if only we could get that ball to do what the car on the bank does, which is fly out and then explode in a fiery ball of death. I would watch golf.
25:38 Chuck Nice? I would watch golf.
25:41 Chuck Nice? That would be amazing.
25:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
25:44 Chuck Nice? Finally.
25:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We'll, we'll talk to the authorities on that one.
25:48 Gary O'Reilly? Can't see this taking off on the golf channel, can you?
25:51 Chuck Nice? Oh, I certainly can.
25:55 Chuck Nice? Exploding golf? Oh my God, I'm watching that.
25:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We've all seen clips of practical jokes where the ball is something that explodes on it. Not explodes dangerously, but just pulverizes on impact. We've seen that, right? You make a golf ball out of chalk or something and but you don't, the person doesn't know it. You're the one who puts the ball on the ground waiting for them and then they hit it. And then it's just a puff of smoke. I've seen that.
26:20 Chuck Nice? That right there is eminently more entertaining than actual golf.
26:26 Gary O'Reilly? Do you get the whisper?
26:28 Chuck Nice? That's all I'm gonna say. That's all I'm gonna say. That is more entertaining than actual golf.
26:34 Gary O'Reilly? Could we get whisper commentary though?
26:36 Chuck Nice? Oh, oh, that'd be so awesome. Just like. He's addressing the ball right now. It's a beautiful day here in Augusta. The winds are out in the south, southwest. I see the ball is on D T. As he approaches the ball, here's the backswing and. Oh my God, exploding. What the hell just happened?
27:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
27:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, I'm sure Chuck's agent is, the phone is ringing off the hook to get Chuck to comment.
27:10 Chuck Nice? Come on, that is, that is awesome. Exploding golf.
27:14 Gary O'Reilly? So if any of our audience are listening or watching this and they play golf and they lip out in the future, it's not because you suck, it's just because of science.
27:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Science.
27:25 Chuck Nice? Right.
27:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And by the way, of course, the ball can, can like bounce in and bounce off the bottom of the cup and bounce out. It's not lipping out.
27:33 Chuck Nice? Yeah, but that's, whoa, now, now you just, I gotta know now, maybe you know or not. Let's say the ball does pop in, like it's bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, bounces in the cup.
27:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And back out, yeah.
27:46 Chuck Nice? Bounces back out. Is that still considered, it touched the bottom of the cup?
27:51 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
27:52 Chuck Nice? Does, is that a shot made or do you have to then complete, put it back?
27:57 Gary O'Reilly? Have you sunk that? Is that technically a sink, whatever you call it? That's in.
28:03 Chuck Nice? Yeah, whatever, yeah.
28:03 Gary O'Reilly? Because the cup is metal, isn't it? So there's every chance.
28:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's tin, yeah, tin cup, as they say, yeah.
28:09 Gary O'Reilly? So if it falls vertically. Then there's a chance it can vertically pop.
28:15 Chuck Nice? It could pop back out, that's what I'm saying.
28:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It could pop back out, yeah.
28:17 Chuck Nice? If it's a high enough arc on the bounce, and it ends up falling directly into the cup, hitting the bottom, and then popping back out.
28:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
28:25 Chuck Nice? Is that now a shot made?
28:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It just needs enough energy to bounce several, even bounce a couple of times to then pop back out.
28:31 Gary O'Reilly? We need officials, we need golf officials for our shot.
28:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm suspecting the ball has to still be in the bottom of the cup when you reach in there to continue.
28:37 Chuck Nice? Oh, see, that is cold-blooded, man.
28:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, just become a better golfer, that's all.
28:43 Chuck Nice? I put it in the cup, how much better can I be? I mean, God. You know, that's kind of like if the ball has enough arc where it falls through the basketball hoop, which is highly unlikely, but then somehow bounces back up through the basketball, you still get the two points.
29:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so you're talking about it falls through the hoop, bounces off the ground, it goes back up through the hoop.
29:09 Chuck Nice? Back up through the hoop, you still get two points. As a matter of fact, they should give you six points.
29:15 Gary O'Reilly? Can you imagine how high you would have to be to get the rebound to go back up through the hoop?
29:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is, you would get the two points on that, Chuck, two or three points.
29:23 Chuck Nice? You get the two points, right, so that's what I'm saying.
29:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, I know, I know, the new rule, if it, if it goes backwards through the hoop, it subtracts the points.
29:34 Chuck Nice? That's just wrong.
29:38 Gary O'Reilly? I don't know.
29:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, so, so our, our crack team of behind-the-scenes researchers has confirmed that a ball that bounces out, that counts as a stroke.
29:48 Chuck Nice? Okay, that's so, so you don't get the, you don't get this, it's not over, you still got to play that ball.
29:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct, correct.
29:56 Chuck Nice? Oh, that's terrible. This is why I hate golf.
30:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This, okay, we should rename this Reasons Why Chuck Hates Golf. Not Enough Explosions, number one.
30:09 Chuck Nice? There you go, starting with that. That's the Michael Bay reason, not enough explosions.
30:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And not enough chase scenes, yeah.
30:16 Chuck Nice? Right, no chase scenes, and if the ball bounces in the hole, which is the whole point of the game. If I actually, if I actually achieve the objective of the game, which is to put the ball in the hole, if the ball comes back out of the hole, then I, I, I have not completed my objective.
30:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So. All right, so now here's another thing. If you want, if you want the spin on the ball to help you not get a lip out. If you give a little sort of, I don't know if you can do this with a putter, but surely there's a way. You give it a slight sort of backspin. Very slight, okay? So that when it begins to lean into the cup, the backspin takes it down into the cup. Right on. But if you give it frontspin, which is what normally happened if it's sort of rolling in a normal way. It has frontspin as it goes in. But you can, you can disrupt that a little by, by subtracting some of that frontspin. So the ball is skidding for part of the way. You can do that, all right? But if you give it frontspin, then that sucker is just gonna wanna, wanna,
31:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? you know, I've, I've seen some lipouts where it's gone twice around the hole before it came out. So, yeah. Off breaking. You got it. You got it. So, so that's, that's lipping out on the golf course. Now, we've, haven't we done other shows about the, the science of golf clubs and things? I think we have. Yeah.
31:39 Chuck Nice? We need to do a show called Golf Sucks.
31:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, stop, stop.
31:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I think on those other shows, we muffled Chuck.
31:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We muzzled Chuck on those and, and we proceeded. All right, when we come back, let's talk about what role the bank in NASCAR or any racetrack plays in the success of high-speed turns on StarTalk Sports Edition.
32:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. I got Gary and Chuck with me, guys, all right? So we came off the last segment, we were talking about lipping out in golf and how the ball can just sort of go along the rim. And it's not the vertical rim, it's the boundary between the turf where it meets the rim. And that's not an exact vertical thing. It's not a 90-degree angle, is it? It's not a, not where the grass is there and the grass ends. And so it's kind of like a bank. You're basically banking the golf ball. And depending on the speed of the golf ball, it will bank its way out of the hole or fall into the hole. One or the other. Well, in any racetrack that's any kind of oval.
33:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is designed for high speeds, they're gonna bank the turn. And I don't know if you've ever been to a NASCAR race. I went, I was in Daytona once and I made sure to catch one. And they invited me down to the, into the middle and I, it was fun. And, and have you ever tried walking up the bank of that track? No. You can't, you, you, you, you, you, it's like, what? This is a hill with a slope I have never walked up in my life. Okay? And so then you realize, oh my gosh. What angle is it? What, okay, I don't remember the angle. But it's higher than your brain is telling you it should be. All right? And so you're saying, what's going on here? So, we should ask the question, if there were no bank
33:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? and your car going into the turn, you are relying entirely on the friction between your tires and the road. Good luck. Tokyo Drift, baby! Okay. Entirely. So, are you gonna slide out before you make this turn? Or not? This is what you, this is, okay? And you have to steer to make sure you stay on the track. Always turn towards the skid, people, remember that. Okay, so now. But, if I put a bank on that turn, then the track is applying a force at you,
34:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? inward, towards you, to the center of the arc of the circle, of the arc of the turn. Okay. Okay? So there's a force pointing inward. And the steeper the track, the greater that force is as you drive along that track, okay? Look, I'm your turn, Sidmore.
34:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you can calculate. The exact angle of the track, based on how fast your car is going and what we say is the radius of curvature, how tight is the turn? You could match those three quantities so that as you drive into the turn, you don't have to steer at all.
35:12 Gary O'Reilly? But Neil, what speed am I doing for the track to be my magic?
35:16 Chuck Nice? Well, it depends on the incline of the bank, you gotta know that.
35:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It depends on what the track is and what the expected speeds are of the cars. The last time I ran this calculation, it was about 180 miles an hour, something like that, for what I'm describing to take effect, okay?
35:33 Chuck Nice? So you're not, you're not, you're not, you're not gonna do it in your Toyota Tercel?
35:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, because what happens in your Toyota, you don't have enough speed to sustain that, and so the car is gonna, might fall into the middle of the track.
35:46 Chuck Nice? Slide down as you're trying to go around it.
35:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As you're trying to go around.
35:50 Gary O'Reilly? How many racing drivers, Neil, do you think are gonna say, you know what, I've got it to the speed I need it to be at, I'm gonna take my hands off the wheel and let the bank do the rest?
35:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so, none of them, but I can tell you this, that if you go higher than that speed.
36:06 Chuck Nice? Yeah, right.
36:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You run the risk of skidding off into the embankments, and you see every race that happens.
36:12 Chuck Nice? And that is why we watch NASCAR! Yes!
36:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, what I'm saying is, the cars that mildly lose control, but not enough to be taken out of the race, and they, if they slide off, it's on the bank and they slide up and hit the upper thing, because they're trying to take the turn too fast.
36:33 Chuck Nice? Yes, and it's, and that is true. That's when you see the car, and the car, like, high sides, the, the car is straight, it's totally straight as it's going around, but then you see it high side, the back comes around.
36:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct, correct.
36:48 Chuck Nice? Okay.
36:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's right, because it is overcoming the native force of the tilted track to turn the car. So, yeah, that's right, so you lose the, the, the frictional connection between your car, and just like the Toyota Tercel, that would just sort of slide down inward on the track. So, um, so.
37:09 Gary O'Reilly? Remember when we sat down with Mario Andretti, Formula One world champion?
37:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One of my favorite interviews. I loved that. He came to my, I had Mario Andretti in my Hayden Plantarium office, people.
37:19 Chuck Nice? I forgot about that.
37:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, I did.
37:21 Gary O'Reilly? What did he say about racing?
37:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I asked him because I had heard this quote and I wanted it confirmed by him. He said, yes, I am responsible for that quote. The quote is, if you are in complete control of your car, you're not in the race.
37:41 Gary O'Reilly? So when the guy, when the, when the race, when the NASCAR driver comes in at slightly higher speed, he is holding to the Mario Andretti principle.
37:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yes, correct. And by the way, it's not a guarantee that you'll always fly off. You're just at higher risk of that. Okay? Depends on, you know, what your airfoil is doing, your spoiler is doing and what the design of your underbelly of the car is, what the air currents are. Cause these all change forces operating on your car. So the point is, if you entered the turn at the speed the turn was banked for.
38:14 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
38:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? Then you do not have to steer the car and the direction of the car will completely change with the track. What this means is, even if you are a little lower or a little higher than that speed, basically, any steering you're doing on the track is to maneuver among the cars, not to actually change the direction you're driving in. This is important because there's an old joke about, about Charlotte. Okay, Charlotte, North Carolina, where all drivers only know how to turn left. Okay? Because that's the headquarters for NASCAR. And so it's, it's a joke about this, but in fact, the track is doing your steering and not you.
38:52 Chuck Nice? So it should be Charlotte, North Carolina, where no one knows how to turn at all.
38:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly. No, yeah, because you're, again, you're only turning to maneuver your place among the other cars.
39:02 Chuck Nice? Right, right.
39:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which by the way, is a better te- test of the driver as you're maneuvering, I think, right? You shouldn't have to worry about, let me change a turn because the track is turning. Now, of course, in the, in the open wheel sports, the Formula One.
39:15 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
39:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, those tend to be on flat tracks and.
39:20 Gary O'Reilly? They're not always, Neil, they're not always flat. There's hills, there's banks, there's chicanes.
39:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, sorry, yeah, sorry, but the, yeah, but they're in roads. It's the road racing, right? I mean, there's so much of that. It's a track.
39:32 Gary O'Reilly? It's Monaco. Monte Carlo's a road race, but the rest of it is specific.
39:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're tracks, and they have actual turns. They're actual turns, correct. Where you're not going 200 miles an hour on the turn. You have to slow, really slow down to make that turn. Couple of other things before we break. The undersides of the cars. Yeah, I see what you did there, by the way, before we break. I'm just saying, I caught it.
39:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you have fast-moving air, there is lower pressure than slow-moving air, okay? And that's the famous experiment you can do with a ribbon of paper. Have you ever done this experiment? If you, you can do it at home. Just cut a ribbon of paper from a sheet of loosely paper, eight and a half by 11, but make it like two inches across, okay? And it's gotta be long and droopy, so it can't be like a postcard or something. And let it droop in front of you and blow above it. And as you blow above it, the moving air has lower pressure than the stationary air below it, and the paper flutters up and ends up horizontal in front of your face.
40:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so the airflow around the shapes of these cars affects that.
40:46 Gary O'Reilly? Yes.
40:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that also affects the effective weight of the car on the track, which gives you more friction, which is what you want.
40:54 Gary O'Reilly? So you're playing with the mass as opposed to the weight, and you're creating suction? No.
41:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now we got a whole nother explainer. The mass versus weight are two different things.
41:07 Gary O'Reilly? Right, but you must be, are you creating a suction?
41:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, you can, you can create more weight on a car's tires without increasing its mass.
41:18 Gary O'Reilly? That's what I was trying to say, but.
41:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, exactly. It's basically putting your thumb on the scale.
41:25 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
41:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, okay.
41:30 Gary O'Reilly? Metaphorically speaking.
41:31 Chuck Nice? You know what I'm saying.
41:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, that's a B+ analogy. We can improve on that, Chuck.
41:36 Chuck Nice? Yeah, you know. It's like, you know, if you're pressed down on a scale, you're heavier, but the truth is, you're not.
41:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, have you ever noticed, just a little teaser, you ever notice the spoilers that are on cars? They're flat on the top and curved on the bottom.
41:52 Chuck Nice? Curved on the bottom.
41:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You ever notice that?
41:54 Chuck Nice? Yes.
41:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, that's the opposite of what an airplane wing does. The airplane wing is curved on the top and flat on the bottom. Because an airplane wants you to go up as it moves through the air, whereas the spoiler on the back wants the back of the car to press downward with more force and increasing the effective weight of the car without increasing its mass. Very important for car racing. That's a whole other thing.
42:19 Gary O'Reilly? All right.
42:19 Chuck Nice? Nice.
42:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a whole nother.
42:20 Gary O'Reilly? Stay tuned.
42:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stay tuned, we'll get there. So, thanks for, is this our inaugural edition of StarTalk Sports? Things you thought you knew?
42:29 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, I think it's the first time we've shone the StarTalk light through the portal of sport for things you thought you knew, so yes.
42:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, because that's a very successful format over on the other side of the house.
42:42 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
42:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, we good here, folks? So, Gary.
42:44 Gary O'Reilly? Yes.
42:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, always good to have you there.
42:46 Gary O'Reilly? Pleasure, Neil.
42:46 Chuck Nice? Always a pleasure.
42:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My intrepid trustee co-host. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, signing out for a StarTalk Sports edition. Keep looking out.
Previous Cosmic Queries – Space Suits with Ana Diaz Artiles Next Cosmic Queries – Intergalactic Impacts Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
