Armed Polite Society

Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Manedwolf on September 17, 2007, 09:38:48 PM

Title: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: Manedwolf on September 17, 2007, 09:38:48 PM
This was a game on the 12th, apparently...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=E3zO0ZxDS4c
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: Jamisjockey on September 18, 2007, 02:47:09 AM
Probably some kind of weight in the bat that slid to the end making it stand up?
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: K Frame on September 18, 2007, 03:30:10 AM
Some bats have a sharply shouldered end with a cupped head. It's hard to tell, but I suspect that this is one of them. After that, it's simply luck.

That was an MLB game. No weights inside the bat (if anything, ball players may try to hollow the bat out and "cork" it to make the head lighter) and certainly nothing that's sliding around.
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: Harold Tuttle on September 18, 2007, 05:29:45 AM
"that will never happen in 100 years"

but it did
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: BrokenPaw on September 18, 2007, 05:49:35 AM
As I recall, there's a story about a college mathematics professor who was flipping a coin in his class to demonstrate the fact that the Gambler's Fallacy didn't hold water.  On one of the flips, the quarter landed on his desk and stood on edge.  The chances of this happening are very real, but are negligible under most circumstances.  But considering the number of coins that have been flipped over the years, it's not unreasonable to expect that this would happen on occasion.

Likewise, if it's possible for a bat to stand on end, then it's really not unreasonable to expect that as some point, given the millions of times a batter has tossed a bat aside, once or twice something like this would happen sooner or later.
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: Brad Johnson on September 18, 2007, 07:15:14 AM
A former co-worker who really was a rocket scientist in a former life (actually a high energy physicist) told me you could, mathmatically speaking, show at least a remote probablility that a ball thrown at a solid concrete wall would pass right through it.

Brad
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: Manedwolf on September 18, 2007, 07:22:02 AM
Quote from: Brad Johnson on September 18, 2007, 06:15:14 AM
A former co-worker who really was a rocket scientist in a former life (actually a high energy physicist) told me you could, mathmatically speaking, show at least a remote probablility that a ball thrown at a solid concrete wall would pass right through it.

Brad

The RL equivalent of a wallhack or map bug in a FPS game?  grin
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: AmbulanceDriver on September 19, 2007, 07:54:17 AM
Quote from: Brad Johnson on September 18, 2007, 06:15:14 AM
A former co-worker who really was a rocket scientist in a former life (actually a high energy physicist) told me you could, mathmatically speaking, show at least a remote probablility that a ball thrown at a solid concrete wall would pass right through it.

Brad

You know, I really wish you wouldn't have said this....  The more I think about it, the more my head hurts........
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: Brad Johnson on September 19, 2007, 08:12:35 AM
That's just the tip of the iceberg.  Scott's favorite thing was to start throwing random concepts from theoretical physics and quantum mechanics into the conversation.  I loved it and learned a lot from him.  But even as insanely curious as I am, MEGO began to set in after a while.

Brad
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: 280plus on September 19, 2007, 03:09:34 PM
I have to say, having shot a lot of matches over the years, it's quite common to find at least a few of the spent shells standing on their ends when we sweep up afterwards. Does this apply to baseball bats? Hell, I don't know!  laugh

I'll tell you what I think, I think the end of the bat made a nice divot in the sand that was just enough to capture and hold it upright. Just a guess though...
Title: Re: What made this baseball bat do this?!
Post by: K Frame on September 19, 2007, 08:03:21 PM
Well, considering that at the atomic level a wall and a baseball are what, about 99.9% open space, yeah, I guess its theoretically possible.