With opening day right around the corner, baseball is on the minds of students, teachers and fans. How can you keep your students engaged when the boys of summer take the field?
Here are a few resources and activities to introduce the science of baseball into the classroom while supporting sports and fun:
Exploratorium’s Science of Baseball: The Exploratorium in San Francisco has a page dedicated to the science and history of baseball. The activities section has short exercises that can be used to support physics and math lessons.
The Physics of Baseball: This University of Illinois site is dedicated to research on the physics of baseball. The high-speed video clips provide a cool way to show how a baseball reacts when hit by a bat, and how the energy transfer moves along the bat.
Society for American Baseball Research (SABR): Sabermetrics is the general term used to describe the many and detailed analyses that measure the game of baseball. From a simple batting average to an in-depth analysis of a pitcher’s performance on a rainy Tuesday in July, Sabermetrics is big business for some mathematicians.
Also, check out these articles:
Hit a 95 Mph Baseball? Scientists Pinpoint How We See It Coming is a high school level article that describes ongoing research in neuroscience and how the brain processes objects moving toward us and reacts by predicting how an object will move.
Baseball: From Pitch to Hits is an engaging article for middle school and high school readers. The article introduces the science of baseball and can be used to kick start a physics or energy lesson.
How the Physics of Baseball Works includes video clips and provides an entertaining exploration of the physics behind throwing, hitting and catching.
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