05-10-2002, 01:49 PM
I was wrong...
"For years, many scientists believed that the curveball was an optical illusion. As we shall see, this is not true. In fact, physicists have long been aware of the fact that a spinning ball curves in flight, going back to Isaac Newton, who wrote a paper on the subject in 1671. In 1852, the German physicist Gustav Magnus revived the topic when he demonstrated in an experiment that when a spinning object moves through a fluid it experiences a sideways force. This phenomenon, now known as the Magnus Effect, is the fundamental principle behind the curved flight of any spinning ball."
Pretty interesting information about it here...
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.pitching.net/mechanicsofabreakingpitch.htm">http://www.pitching.net/mechanicsofabreakingpitch.htm</a><!-- m -->
"For years, many scientists believed that the curveball was an optical illusion. As we shall see, this is not true. In fact, physicists have long been aware of the fact that a spinning ball curves in flight, going back to Isaac Newton, who wrote a paper on the subject in 1671. In 1852, the German physicist Gustav Magnus revived the topic when he demonstrated in an experiment that when a spinning object moves through a fluid it experiences a sideways force. This phenomenon, now known as the Magnus Effect, is the fundamental principle behind the curved flight of any spinning ball."
Pretty interesting information about it here...
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.pitching.net/mechanicsofabreakingpitch.htm">http://www.pitching.net/mechanicsofabreakingpitch.htm</a><!-- m -->
![[Image: 723475742_8cb2b0be6c.jpg]](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1019/723475742_8cb2b0be6c.jpg)