Serway & Jewett — Circular Motion and Other Applications of Newton's Laws: Problem 50

You have a great job working at a major league baseball stadium for the summer! At this stadium, the speed of every pitch is measured using a radar gun aimed at the pitcher by an operator behind home plate. The operator has so much experience with this job that he has perfected a technique by which he can make each measurement at the exact instant at which the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. Your supervisor asks you to construct an algorithm that will provide the speed of the ball as it crosses home plate, 18.3 m from the pitcher, based on the measured speed \(v_i\) of the ball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. The speed at home plate will be lower due to the resistive force of the air on the baseball. The vertical motion of the ball is small, so, to a good approximation, we can consider only the horizontal motion of the ball. You begin to develop your algorithm by applying the particle under a net force to the baseball in the horizontal direction. A pitch is measured to have a speed of 40.2 m/s as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. You need to tell your supervisor how fast it was traveling as it crossed home plate. (Hint: Use the chain rule to express acceleration in terms of a derivative with respect to x, and then solve a differential equation for v to find an expression for the speed of the baseball as a function of its position. The function will involve an exponential. Also make use of Table 6.1.)