When a baseball is tilted and spinning just right, its raised, hand-stitched seams skew the process by which its wake is created and radically shift its trajectory in the air
7 December 2023
A baseball’s seams play a larger part in the sport than we had thought Aaron Doster/Getty Images
The seams on a baseball play an unexpectedly large role in shifting its trajectory in midair.
How a baseball flies after leaving the pitcher’s hand depends on factors including its speed and spin and even the weather at the ballpark. Barton Smith at Utah State University and his colleagues discovered that the orientation of the baseball’s seams also plays a part,…
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