Robert Adair Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

The American ash from which bats are made has an unusually high strength-to-weight ratio. Ash was celebrated in medieval times as the only proper wood from which to construct the lances of knights errant; an ash lance was light enough to carry and wield and strong enough to impale the opposition.

Robert Adair
Control pitchers hit corners with an uncertainty of of about 3. One must be a fairly good shot to shoot a pistol with that accuracy.

Robert Adair
Much of the subtlety of baseball is derived from the fact that so much of the game is played in the region between definitely smooth flow and definitely turbulent flow, at ball velocities greater than 50 mph and smaller than 120 mph.

Robert Adair
Note that the ball falls at a rather large angle at the end of its flight; the trajectories are not symmetric.

Robert Adair
We not that those players with weaker arms might be better off throwing at a lower angle to get the ball to the plate on the bounce. If the surface is Astroturf, the 90-mph player can gain as much as 0.2 seconds, or 6 feet, on the runner by throwing on the bounce. But if his team is playing on grass and his groundskeeper has kept the grass long and well watered to help his team (which relies on singles, speed, and baserunning), the ball may lose so much speed at the bounce that nothing will be gained.

Robert Adair
Almost all of fluid dynamics follows from a differential equation called the Navier-Stokes equation. But this general equation has not, in practice, led to solutions of real problems of any complexity. In this sense, the curve of a baseball is not understood; the Navier-Stokes equation applied to a base ball has not been solved.

Robert Adair
Balls curve as a consequence of asymmetries in the resistance of the air through which they pass.

Robert Adair
To hit a baseball with dispatch, one needs both to step into the ball and to rotate.

Robert Adair
A small, but interesting, portion of baseball can be understood on the basis of physical principles. The flight of balls, the liveliness of balls, the structure of bats, and the character of the collisions of balls and bats are a natural province of physics and physicists.

Robert Adair
Every 3 feet of lead is worth about one-tenth of a second, and a rolling start is worth a good half second. Indeed, the difference between the runner having his weight mainly on his front foot and mainly on his back foot (but don't let the pitcher catch you leaning!) must be worth more than one-tenth of a second.

Robert Adair
The maximum Magnus force on a ball spinning at a rate of 1800 rpm is seen to be about one-third of the weight of the ball, so we cannot expect a ball spinning at that rate to curve more than one third of the distance it will fall under gravity.

Robert Adair
Physics is narrow, precise, and simple in a manner such that history, sociology, psychology, or the study of literature are broad, hazy, and difficult.

Robert Adair
Our condemnation of "how" pertains to the deep, fundamental, questions of physics. As a matter of common speech, physicists use "how" and "why" like everyone else - and without apology - in questions that refer uncertain inferences or observations to better establish constructs or observations.

Robert Adair
It has been said that all expository books are simply forms of selected plagiarism.

Robert Adair