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

— Robert Adair

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More quotes by Robert Adair

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

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

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

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.

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.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Adair (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.