Do It Better

Process

To begin with, my partner and I started brainstorming past projects that we liked and wanted to do better. We both love sports, so we chose to do the physics of sports project. I then started looking for ways to improve from my past video. I chose a more challenging sport to find calculations for, I made the video shorter because my other one was too long, and I added three calculations instead of two. After that, I made a story board layout for the video. I added the steps on each sticky note. We then filmed the video clips we needed at the field. This was a struggle because my partner does not pitch well. After we got the clips we needed, I edited the video together. I then made a layout of what we would say in the voice overs. Then, we did our calculations and added them to the video. In the end, we finished with a shorter, to the point video with more calculations than my past project.

Original Storyboard

This is the original story board I made for the project. Since I was the one who plays softball, I had to come up with the steps and the order of the video. As we went through with the video, we had to take out explaining a few steps in the story board because they were too detailed and took up a lot of time. However, all the steps we kept in the video were planned out and executed so that the person watching can easily understand what we are trying to teach them.

Script

This is the original script I came up with for the voice overs throughout the video. I made adjustments as I recorded, however this was the original lay out.

Calculations

We added physics calculations to our video to make sure the athletes watching would understand how they should hit the ball to have the best chance of achieving their goal in an at bat. We calculated the velocity of the bat to give an example of how fast they should be swinging. We also showed the exit velocity to the people watching know how fast the ball should be going. However, we had to use an average pitch speed to put into our equation because we only did front toss in the video. We also used 100% elastic collision to find the exit velocity of the ball, so the velocity we found is not accurate to the clip in the video. We also calculated the force of the ball so that people know what to expect if they were to get into the batters box. The calculations can also help other athletes who watch the video calculate their own forces and velocities to compare to professionals.

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Final Video

This is our final video. In the video, we explain the form behind hitting a softball. We also help explain the hit better by finding calculations. In the video, I explained the strike zone, stance, and very basic tips for the swing. I didn't go super in depth while explaining the steps because one of my goals to make the project better was to make the video shorter. I am proud of the final video because we were able to add more calculations and make the video shorter while still being able to give the viewer important information. Even though our main goal of this video was to improve from the last video, It was still very important for us to make sure the video was informational. So, I hope the people who watch this video benefit from it and learn something new.

Concepts

Velocities

In this project, we found the velocity of the bat (bat speed), and the velocity of the ball (exit velocity). To find the velocity of the bat, we had to divide the distance my bat traveled, 2.4 m,by the amount of time it took for my bat to travel that distance, 0.1 s. That equation told us that the velocity of my bat was 24 m/s or about 54 mph. To find the exit velocity, we added a pitch speed, 27.7 m/s, and the velocity of the bat, 24 m/s. This equation assumes that there is 100% elastic collision which is unrealistic in real life. However, the product was 51.7 m/s.

Force Of Ball

My partner and I calculated the force of the ball as it is pitched to the batter. This could represent the amount of force the ball would hit you with if you were to get hit by a pitch. we found this by using the equation mv=Ft. We multiplied the mass of the ball, 0.19 kg, by the velocity of the pitch, 27.7 m/s. We then divided that by the amount of time it took for me to swing, 0.1s, and got the final product, 52.63 N.

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