Kuroda's Head...

Question

I'm not much of a baseball fan - nothing against it, just not much of a fan - but every local news channel is running the footage of Kuroda taking a line drive to the HEAD, pretty much on a continuous loop.

How is it possible this guy isn't dead? They're talking about putting him back into the rotation around THURSDAY!

Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]How is it possible this guy isn't dead? They're talking about putting him back into the rotation around THURSDAY![/nq]
A baseball weighs a little less that 0.15 kilograms, and it leaves the bat of a solid line drive at about 50 meters per second. However, at this high speed, it loses about one meter per second in speed for every three meters it travels due to drag, so by the time the ball reaches the pitcher's mound 18 meters away, the speed of the ball will have dropped to about 45 meters per second.
The kinetic energy (the energy of motion) of the baseball at the time of impact is 1/2 ***^2 (one half the mass times the velocity squared). One half of 0.15 is 0.075 and 45 squared (45 multiplied by itself) is 2025, so the energy of the ball is 151 joules.
You can see that the ball retained a substantial amount of energy after impact, perhaps traveling about three times slower after the impact than before- doing the math the ball retained 16 joules of kinetic energy after impact.
So the total kinetic energy transfered to the pitcher's head is 135 joules. By contrast the energy of a pellet from my son's Crosman air gun is 15 joules, so the pitcher took in the energy equivalent of 9 BB gun shots distributed over a wider area and at a much lower speed.

Painful, but not debilitating.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]How is it possible this guy isn't dead? They're talking about putting him back into the rotation around THURSDAY![/nq]
[nq:1]A baseball weighs a little less that 0.15 kilograms, and it leaves the bat of a solid line drive at ... per second. The kinetic energy (the energy of motion) of the baseball at the time of impact is 1/2 ***[/nq]^2 (one half the mass times the velocity squared). One
[nq:1]half of 0.15 is 0.075 and 45 squared (45 multiplied by itself) is 2025, so the energy of the ball ... of 9 BB gun shots distributed over a wider area and at a much lower speed. Painful, but not debilitating.[/nq]
...on the other hand...
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=63792

Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]How is it possible this guy isn't dead? They're talking about putting him back into the rotation around THURSDAY![/nq]
[nq:1]A baseball weighs a little less that 0.15 kilograms, and it leaves the bat of a solid line drive at about 50 meters per second. However, at this high speed, it loses about one meter per second in speed for every three meters it travels due to drag, so by the time the ball reaches the pitcher's mound 18 meters away, the speed of the ball will have dropped to about 45 meters per second. The kinetic energy (the energy of motion) of the baseball at the time of impact is 1/2 ***[/nq]^2 (one half the mass times the velocity squared). One
[nq:1]half of 0.15 is 0.075 and 45 squared (45 multiplied by itself) is 2025, so the energy of the ball ... joules of kinetic energy after impact. So the total kinetic energy transfered to the pitcher's head is 135 joules. [/nq]
Not to poke a hole in all your clever math, but back when I went to school, there was a difference between addition and multiplication.

What we are talking about here, measured in joules, is "force of impact"
I can hit something at force X nine times or even ninety times, and not break it or hit it once at force nine X and shatter it.

A bee bee fired from a Crossman air gun travels leaves the muzzle at around 400 feet per second or say 250 miles an hour (give or take) and even at that speed, it won't do me any significant harm (unless it hits me in the eye or the ear). Traveling nine times faster, that would NOT be the equivalent of being hit nine times at 250 miles an hour it would be the equivalent of getting hit once* at *2250 miles an hour or around three times the speed of sound.

If you got hit even by a bee bee, travelling that fast, the kinetic energy would explode your *** head.
This is like saying, well, he got burned at nine hundred hundred degrees well, ****, my son's "Honey Bun Cookie Oven" cooks at a hundred and fifty degrees. That's like he got burned by that six times. Big deal.
Talk about being blinded by science.
Or by bee bees.
NMS

Usenet · Answer

Traveling nine times faster, that
[nq:1]would NOT be the equivalent of being hit nine times at 250 miles an hour it would be the equivalent of getting hit once* at *2250 miles an hour or around three times the speed of sound.[/nq]
Kinetic energy increases with the SQUARE of the velocity. A particle traveling at 2250 miles per hour hour would thus have 81 times the kinetic energy of the same particle traveling at 250 miles per hour, not
9 times the energy.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]...on the other hand... http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=63792[/nq]
Even a BB can kill if it hits the right place, Achilles-style, I suppose, though I've never heard of it happening.
I once had a client charged with attempted murder for using a paintball gun to tear the **** out of his (former) buddy.
Hit him in the face more than 100 times at point-blank range while a couple of other guys held him down. I got the charge reduced to misdemeanor assault because I was able to prove with expert testimony that nobody has ever been killed by a paintball (at least not as of
2006) and so the there could be no intent to kill by shooting paintballs.

However, the poor *** he shot was really torn up and came close to dying.

Kuroda's Head...

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