You are reading the article Why Is The Knuckleball So Hard A Baseball Pitch To Hit? updated in November 2023 on the website Minhminhbmm.com. We hope that the information we have shared is helpful to you. If you find the content interesting and meaningful, please share it with your friends and continue to follow and support us for the latest updates. Suggested December 2023 Why Is The Knuckleball So Hard A Baseball Pitch To Hit?
sci0502knuckleball_A.jpg
Want to throw a knuckler? In 1939, the price of knowledge was the cost of a pack of gum.
Batters see knuckleballs much less frequently than more conventional pitches. Of the thousands of professionals who’ve pitched in Major League Baseball, only 84 qualify as knuckleball pitchers, according to Knuckleball Headquarters. The rarity of the pitch, also called a floater, may contribute to its effectiveness: The more often a hitter sees a pitch, the better he can adjust his swing.
Most important to the knuckler’s evasiveness, however, is the pitch’s erratic flight to the plate-an effect achieved because the ball is thrown with little or no rotation. Without rotation, the knuckleball will flutter, dance, and generally behave unpredictably. (The key is to throw the ball with a stiff wrist.)
The science behind the knuckler was clarified when engineers Eric Sawyer and Robert Watts of Tulane University in New Orleans conducted wind tunnel experiments in 1975. They found that pressure would build up on one side of the ball and then the other, causing it to dart back and forth from its original trajectory.
One of the elite 84 knuckleballers, Jim Bouton, who won 21 games as a fastball pitcher for the Yankees in 1963, was able to extend his career as a knuckleballer after an injury robbed him of the fastball. An author as well, Bouton wrote the celebrated Ball Four. An update, Ball Four-The Final Pitch, appeared in 2000.
Bouton learned the pitch as a youngster from instructions on the back of a cereal box. He and his brother then threw hundreds of attempted knucklers in the yard, until he finally launched a genuine spinless pitch that dropped at the last minute, hitting his brother in the knee. “Ow!” the sibling yelled, “what a great pitch!”
“I spent my teenage years maiming my brother and father, and anyone else who tried to catch my knuckler,” Bouton remembers. Because he also had a blazing fastball, the teams he pitched for discouraged the knuckleball. “A fastball is like a jackhammer, and a knuckleball is like brain surgery,” he says. “I could not have mixed the two very well.”
After Bouton retired in 1970, he continued to pitch semiprofessionally in his free time exclusively as a knuckleballer, and launched an unprecedented return to the majors in 1978. He’s done a fair amount of thinking about the pitch.
“It’s part of Bernoulli’s principle, how air lifts airplane wings,” he says. “Because the knuckleball is moving through the air without spinning, air currents that flow over and under the ball are not equal, creating a disturbance immediately behind the ball.”
“Or,” he continues, “think of the
old musket balls from colonial times. When they came out of the muskets they would be accurate for only 15 or 20 feet, then they would destabilize, because of Bernoulli’s principle. Then they invented rifling in the barrels of guns. When a bullet comes out of a gun, the spiral grooves cause it to spin like a football. It’s that spinning that keeps it on target.” A knuckleball is like a musket ball-unpredictable.
Pitchers don’t need to know the science, though. “All you need to know is that if you put any kind of a spin on it at all, it’ll travel about 475 feet in the opposite direction,” Bouton says.
“Contact hitters, the guys who wait until the very last moment to get their bat on the ball, are the most effective against the knuckler,” Bouton points out. “Free-swinging home run hitters can be totally helpless.”
The knuckleball invariably taps a wellspring of humor, and Bouton offers one last laugh. “Remember what Bob Uecker (the announcer and former big league catcher) had to say about how to handle the knuckleball? You just wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.”
You're reading Why Is The Knuckleball So Hard A Baseball Pitch To Hit?
The Reason Why Bitcoin Is ‘So Attractive’
Bitcoin, the largest crypto token has traveled a long journey since its inception. The perceptions about these digital assets have moved from those of a pessimistic nature to that of a more optimistic one. At press time, it was trading just shy of the $48,000 mark.
Nonetheless, Bitcoin has suffered a significant amount of volatility in the past. Well, speculations, risks and regulations have mainly contributed to this.
Biggest risks involvedCrypto veteran Anthony Pompliano recently discussed about the flagship token in a podcast, putting forward his hypothetical long-term bear case. He mainly highlighted five key FUDs in the interview. He noted that unlike what the Bitcoin proponents believe, the coin won’t cross over into becoming a currency.
“The most it can grow to is gold, which is basically a store of value. [It] isn’t really used to go purchase things on a day-to-day basis and therefore, yes there may be more upside, but it’s kind of a capped upside.”
BTC vs Gold has been an ongoing long-term debate. Even though, the token recorded impressive runs against the precious metal, the latter still lies far ahead in terms of valuation. The graph below highlights the same,
“The second one is eventually we’re gonna figure out who Satoshi is and if we figure out who Satoshi is, that’s going be a bad person, and we’re not gonna want to know who it is and like there’s gonna be a negative impact.”
Meanwhile, BTC’s real-life uses-cases like cross-border payments and other related matters were talked about as well.
“It’s slow. It’s expensive. It’s kind of all these like technical issues with it.”
Moving on, crypto regulations have played a part to put pressure on its value. The uncertainty surrounding the token caused interested individuals to veer away. According to Pompliano, the market was going to get regulated, taxed and eventually shut down by outlawing it.
Lastly, he noted another particular risk that could undermine the integrity of the Bitcoin network. According to Pompliano,
“The best argument somebody could make and what I think is the biggest risk to Bitcoin – it really pisses the critics off because it has nothing to do with anything external.”
He also mentioned how an ecosystem like that has to undergo a development process – which is methodical with filters and security checks in place. However, if there is a bug introduced in the code it would be like “shooting yourself in the foot.”
Nevertheless, in the longer term he remained bullish irrespective of the FUDs in the market.
“The reason why Bitcoin is so attractive is I actually don’t need to have the best returning asset. I don’t need to be greedy. I want the thing that has a great economic return, but also I know it’s gonna be around in 50 years.”
No one, including the government, could possibly stop crypto to exist. “Not even a nuclear war can shut it,” he opined. In addition to this, Tesla chief and billionaire investor Elon Musk too had similar thoughts on the subject at the Code Conference.
Whereas, Mike Alfred– the CEO of BrightScope & Digital Assets Data tweeted,
The biggest risk is not that #bitcoin will go to zero, but that you’ll sell your #bitcoin too soon.
— Mike Alfred (@mikealfred) October 2, 2023
As of now, bitcoin has recovered some ground but still stands below $48,000. Nevertheless, its market capitalization is just shy of $900 billion at press time, and the dominance over the alternative coins sits at 42.5%.
Why Is The Htc Vive So Expensive?
Surprisingly, the Vive and the Quest 2 occupy starkly different areas of the market, with the former costing hundreds of dollars more than the latter, leading to a lot of VR junkies asking what the big idea is.
You can check the price yourself here: HTC Vive Virtual Reality System
At first, this price difference seems fairly outlandish. They both do roundabout the same things, right? But once you take a closer look at some of the technical specs of these two devices, the hefty Vive price tag seems a lot more reasonable. Let’s discuss why…
Refresh RatesThe same principles apply to computer displays. The higher the refresh rate, the smoother the picture and motion will appear. Of course, a high refresh rate is nice to have on any screen, but it’s especially important when it comes to VR.
The Vive and the Vive Pro have a 90Hz refresh rate, and the Pro 2 boasts a whopping 120Hz refresh rate.
On a regular computer screen, the difference between the Oculus Quest 2’s 75Hz and the Vive’s 90Hz refresh rate might be fairly negligible, but during VR, that difference allows you to play harder for longer.
TrackingWhen a computer senses your physical movements, then represents and displays those movements on screen, it’s known as tracking.
VR units need to have incredibly low latency and accurate tracking, otherwise, the VR spell is well and truly broken. If the response is anything other than immediate, players would lose interest in minutes.
It’s a close call, but the HTC Vive and Co. have the most accurate tracking on the market, which ultimately means that they provide the most immersive and realistic gaming experience.
Using SteamVR tracking, the Vive captures your movement almost perfectly, only ever being off by a couple of centimeters here and there.
Field Of ViewThe field of view in a virtual reality game is the maximum observable environment you can see at any one moment, and once again, the HTC Vive has the edge on its main competition, the Oculus Quest 2.
The original Vive, the Vive Pro, and the Pro 2 offer 110° of visible surroundings at all times, while the Quest 2 only lets you see 100°. This means you’re literally getting more virtual world from the Vive, and as you’d imagine, more world means more money.
DisplayThe Original HTC Vive has a 2160 x 1200 resolution. The Oculus Quest 2’s resolution tops out at 1832 x 1920. So, all in all, the Vive has more pixels, which means a crisper, more detailed picture.
In terms of display design, the Vive has an edge once again. The Quest 2 has a liquid crystal display, whereas the Vive has an OLED display, offering sharper contrast ratios and truer blacks.
In addition, the Vive Pro 2 blows both these VR stalwarts out of the water with its 2448 x 2448 resolution.
Battery LifeHere’s one area in which the Vive drops the virtual ball, offering only 2.5 hours of battery life, but as it can also be PC powered, battery life isn’t such an issue. Besides, HTC still generally dominates in terms of battery power.
Take the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite, for instance. This VR beast’s battery can last as long as 8 hours. That’s one hell of a virtual reality session!
The Oculus Quest 2 will only ever last for 3 hours max, which is still great. 3 hours is plenty to really get stuck in and enjoy some virtual worlds, but it doesn’t even compare to the Cosmos Elite. Naturally, the Elite costs more.
Original ProgrammingThe Vive was the first of its kind within the companies responsible for its creation. The programming was all 1st generation, built up from scratch, and building something this complex from the ground up with no blueprints to work from takes a lot of manpower.
HTC and Valve would have had to hire a vast amount of specialists to get the Vive project up and running, and everyone that worked on it needs to be paid, thus, the price of the Vive rises a little higher.
Nowadays, the original Vive is becoming quite difficult to come by, so even though we’re on to the Pro 2, prices remain high due to scarcity.
Summing UpThere you have it, folks. Sure, the HTC Vive was, and still is, expensive, but is the price tag unreasonable? I don’t think so.
Once you factor in all the aspects of its design and that it was basically a prototype VR device built from scratch, the price tag doesn’t sting so much. You feel that you might actually be getting what you pay for, and let’s be honest, you’re getting a lot.
Outside other HTC and Valve products, a 90Hz VR experience is still a rarity today, so hats off to HTC, and hats off to the Vive. If you can afford one, you’re going to have an absolute blast!
Why It’s So Difficult To Forecast A Tornado’s Path
When tornadoes touched down in Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and Tennessee over the weekend, residents and workers had only 20 minutes of warning. More than 70 people are known to have died, but the death toll is expected to climb as first responders search the 200-mile long path of the outbreak.
But that’s about the typical amount of warning for a major tornado, which is forecasted 18 minutes before touching down.
Tornadoes form alongside thunderstorms. But a thunderstorm only spins off a tornado under very specific conditions. Wind at the ground and further above have to be moving in opposite directions. This causes the air between to spin in a horizontal tube. Then, the air on the ground must be warm enough to tip that spinning tube off the ground. And the storm above needs to tug on the top of the now-vertical column, which allows it to grow.
[Related: Here’s what a terrifying tornado outbreak looks like.]
That means that forecasters can predict the conditions where tornadoes are able to form—specific storms, like supercells and hurricanes, are most likely to spin them off—but are much less good at knowing where they will touch down.
Knowing where they will move is another gap. The speed of the storm, as well as the lack of data on upper atmospheric conditions that affect the path of the tornado, make it hard to guess what will happen once it has formed.
So forecasters need to weigh false positives against false negatives. In about 70 percent of tornado warnings between 2023 and 2023, no tornado appeared, according to data reported by chúng tôi (Watches are issued when the conditions look right for a vortex while warnings are issued when forecasters believe one is imminent.) And because it’s so hard to know exactly where a tornado will move after it touches down, few people in a warning zone will actually be near its eventual path.
Watch vs Warning? What’s the difference? Check it our below 👇 chúng tôi NWS Memphis (@NWSMemphis) December 10, 2023
Predicting how powerful a tornado will become is hard, too. Tornado watches simply say that something is coming, but don’t distinguish between a brief tornado with 100mph winds, and a monster that can obliterate buildings.
“With hurricanes, communities will take different actions depending on whether a Category 1 versus a Category 5 storm is in the forecast,” atmospheric scientist Joshua Wurman wrote in a CNN essay on Sunday. “But with tornadoes, no such detail exists—and people may become complacent to warnings, having experienced false alarms.”
In the case of this past weekend’s storm, the death toll seems to be highest where employers didn’t act on the information they were given. And notably, NBC reported this afternoon that employees in a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky, were told that they would be fired if they left early to take shelter. (Company spokespeople dispute the account.) At least eight people died when the factory was destroyed. Insider reported a similar story at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois. Six people died there on Friday night.
So while there are plenty of false negatives, predictions are good enough to let people know that they’re in danger. Decision makers need to be willing to act on that information.
This Is Why Mars Is So Much Smaller Than Earth
One of the main effects of Mars being smaller than Earth is that its gravity is different. Gravity there is around one third the strength of gravity on Earth, because there is less mass attracting things to its surface. This can be useful for exploration in some ways – for example, the Ingenuity helicopter is able to fly there in part because the lower gravity makes it easier to get off the surface (via Digital Trends). But it causes problems in other ways, like making the atmosphere very thin.
The atmosphere on Mars is just 1% of the density of the atmosphere on Earth, and it is mainly composed of carbon dioxide so it isn’t friendly to humans. If humans ever do set foot on Mars, they’ll need to stay in spacesuits or in sealed habitats at all times. Because of the low gravity, Mars cannot hang on to its atmosphere and it has lost atmosphere into space over time (via NASA).
This might also be what happened to Mars’s water. Astronomers are confident that there was once liquid water on Mars, billions of years ago, as we can see evidence of flowing water in rock formations on its surface (via ESA). But now Mars is dry and barren, with basically no liquid water on its surface and only ice at its poles and under its surface.
Experts are still debating exactly how long the water was there and what happened to it, but a leading theory is that Mars once had a water cycle similar to Earth’s (via Max Planck Society). Water on the surface was hit with the sun’s rays and evaporated up into the atmosphere. But once it reached the atmosphere and splits into hydrogen and oxygen, the planet’s lower gravity meant that some of the lighter hydrogen was lost into space. Over time, this meant there was less and less water on the planet.
Mars’s relatively low mass may also play a part in one of its strangest and most distinctive features: The global dust storms which can periodically cover the entire planet. According to NASA, these global dust storms happen every few years and have so far only been observed on Mars. Mars is the dustiest place in the solar system, and because of the low gravity it is easy for these small particles to be picked up by the wind.
We’re still not sure exactly how a dust storm can spread across an entire planet, but weather instruments on the Perseverance rover are studying the weather there to try to learn more (via Digital Trends). And the story of Mars’s size and development isn’t only a matter of history, as it directly affects exploration there now. Mars’s dust could be one of the major obstacles to exploring it, as dust can damage delicate electronics and cover over solar panels, as happened with the rover Opportunity which lost communication in 2023.
If we want to explore Mars more in the future, we’ll need to find ways to address issues like how to design machines which can cope with the dust and how to build spacesuits which can keep astronauts there safe.
Why Is Python So In Demand In The Machine Learning And Ai Fields?
For Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Python has emerged as a well enough and efficient high-level programming language. Data scientists, academics, and developers in various fields embrace it as their language of choice. What, though, makes Python such a perfect combination for these applications and research areas? We’ll analyze Python’s significance in the machine learning and AI disciplines in this article.
The Top Seven Reasons for Python’s Popularity in AI and Machine Learning Ease of Use and ReadabilityPython is an easy-to-read and gaining knowledge of programming language, making it perfect for novices. Its simple syntax and readable, herbal language fashion make it easy to write and comprehend, enabling builders to produce comprehensible code quickly and effectively. This is especially important in the field of computers gaining knowledge of artificial talent (AI), the place where code can be very complicated and challenging to understand. Working with these kinds of apps is a tremendous suit for Python due to the fact of its simplicity and readability.
Large Community and ResourcesPython has a large and bright developer community that is usually developing new machines and gaining knowledge of artificial intelligence frameworks, libraries, and tools. This suggests that programmers have access to a huge variety of tools, consisting of open-source initiatives, tutorials, and documentation, that can enhance their development processes, hasten time-to-market, and make it simpler to address difficult problems.
Availability of Powerful LibrariesFor working with data and growing AI and ML models, Python comes with a variety of modules that have proven to be quite helpful. NumPy and Pandas are two of the most famous libraries due to the fact they supply useful information structures and tools for manipulating and examining data. Additionally, Scikit-Learn is a vital library that offers a wide selection of machine learning and statistical modeling algorithms.
Flexibility and VersatilityScientific computing, web development, data processing, and visualization are just a few of the many uses that Python’s versatility makes possible. In the disciplines of machine learning and AI, where developers routinely work with various types of data and models, this adaptability is particularly essential. Python is a flexible alternative for challenging tasks because it also allows for simple integration with other programs and languages.
High-Performance ComputingAlthough Python isn’t recognized for being fast, there are ways to improve its efficiency. Utilizing tools and libraries made especially for this purpose is one such method. For instance, just-in-time compilation can be used with Numba to speed up Python programming. Another choice is PyPy, a different Python implementation that offers superior performance. Additionally, Python can be used in conjunction with other high-performance computing equipment like C++ and CUDA to similarly increase performance.
Support for Deep Learning Frameworks Increasing Industry AdoptionIn addition to the aforementioned reasons, the enormous use of Python in the AI and ML fields can also be attributed to its growing adoption by using leading enterprise players. Big names like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have developed their very own Python-based equipment and libraries, which has in addition pushed its growth in the field. As a result, authorities who are well-versed in Python are in excessive demand and can obtain a range of job opportunities.
ConclusionIn summary, Python has earned a reputation as the programming language of preference for professionals in computers gaining knowledge of artificial intelligence. Its large community and ecosystem of libraries, along with its simple syntax and readability, make it a reachable and adaptable tool for working with difficult records analysis and deep learning. Python is projected to preserve its dominance in the place as demand for laptop learning and AI rises, making it a vital device for companies making an attempt to use records for increase and innovation.
Update the detailed information about Why Is The Knuckleball So Hard A Baseball Pitch To Hit? on the Minhminhbmm.com website. We hope the article's content will meet your needs, and we will regularly update the information to provide you with the fastest and most accurate information. Have a great day!