Engineering Commons^™

Pitched Baseballs And The Seam Shifted Wake, Andrew W. Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect that seams have on the way a baseball moves through the air. An examination of the airflow around a baseball led to the understanding that when seams are in certain areas on the baseball's surface the airflow changes. A subsequent experiment was performed which showed that when these changes in airflow were on one side of the baseball more than the other, the ball moved away from the side with the seams. This movement is in a different direction than the movement direction caused by a ball's spin. These experiments were done …