SSS 2010-09-17

（单词翻译）

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute?

Baseball players sometimes cheat! One popular method has been to cork¹ the bat. You drill out some of the core of the bat, and replace the heavy wood with light cork. You can then swing the lighter² bat faster, and thus hit the ball further.

Of course, most ballplayers aren't physicists³, so they don't realize that by making the bat lighter, they're reducing the collision efficiency. You swing faster, but get a limper contact. In theory, anyway.

So physicists led by the University of Illinois’s Alan Nathan tested corked⁴ bats under controlled conditions. The doctored lumber⁵ actually usually causes the ball to go less far, they found. The work appears in the online forum⁶ the Physics arXiv. So for a power hitter to cork his bat is a bad idea.

But the researchers note that, ironically, a corked bat might result in more homers from non-homer hitters. Who can watch a pitch slightly longer before swinging, make up for the lost time with a faster swing and achieve more solid contact more often. So a corked bat is a bad idea for Sammy Sosa, who got caught using one. But a good idea for, say, Bucky Dent⁷.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky.