St. Olaf College | Physics Department

"Baseball Physics"

Eli I. Rosenberg

Professor of Physics
Iowa State University

Baseball is a simple game: You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball. But baseballs are governed by the laws of physics and there are some basic physics ideas that are important in understanding why baseballs behave the way they do when thrown and hit. Does a curve ball really curve? Can a fastball rise? What happens when the ball hits the bat? Is it worth "corking" the bat? We will show that some of the seemingly simple aspects to the game are not really that simple. Along the way we'll give some insight as to how a physicist approaches these questions.

Eli Rosenberg is Professor of Physics and Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University. He has a doctorate from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He has been an Enrico Fermi Postdoctoral Fellow and served on the faculty at the University of Chicago. His research interests are in experimental elementary particle physics. He is a former chair of the Executive Committee of Stanford Linear Accelerator Users Organization. He's the former Program Director for High-Energy Physics in the Ames Laboratory (U.S.D.O.E.) and is the lead investigator for all high-energy physics activities at Iowa State