Ball Trajectory Planning

[AlDee]

Originally Posted by mikegrundvig

This paper says drag through the air on a full size basketball is negligible:
http://www.phys.ubbcluj.ro/~evintele...na/Baschet.pdf

But then it gets shot down a bit here:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...n-basketballs/ You can see in the graph at the end here that air drag has a huge impact on a baseball:
http://wps.aw.com/wps/media/objects/...cs/topic01.pdf

-Mike

I believe the ambiguity around the significance of the drag on the basketball vs. the baseball has to do with the density, size and speeds that they are being thrown at.

As an illustrative example imagine a two bowling balls dropped off a tall building. the first weighs 16 pounds, but the second has been hollowed out to weigh only 6 ounces. The exterior surfaces are the same. Neglecting wind resistance, both should hit the ground at the same time since gravity accelerates at -32ft/s^2, however in practice the heaver ball will land first. The aerodynamics of both balls are the same, but the added mass of the heavier ball will over come more drag.

With that said, I tend to agree with others here, that it's good to use math and physics, but my approach would be to keep the math as simple as possible, and build a mock up to see how well your physical results match your theoretical ones.