1,074 MPH BASEBALL vs. 1 Gallon of Mayonnaise - Smarter Every Day 264
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This is a supersonic baseball cannon. We built it because it's awesome and it can make baseballs go supersonic. What have we done? Look at it! We initially just wanted to see if we could make a baseball go past the speed of sound, and we can: 1050 miles an hour, Mach 1.38.
So now it's time to figure out how to use this thing as a tool, because I want to do a lot of cool stuff with it here on Smarter Every Day. So let's have a brief discussion here. Matlab is cool, but have you done plywood? Check this out!
So this is a graph of a smooth sphere, and this is a plot of drag force versus velocity, or speed. And so you can see what happens here is, as the ball goes faster and faster and faster, it ramps up in terms of drag, and then at some point it breaks over a little past 200 miles an hour, and then it drops off, and then it tapers up into infinity as you go past that.
Well, see, the thing is, with our supersonic baseball cannon, we spend a lot of time on this side of the curve, so we don't really know what happens here. This is for a smooth sphere. This is done by a guy named Wesson. We're going to see what we can do with a baseball. The way we're going to do that is we're going to characterize this thing, and that's a fancy way of saying we're going to figure out how it works.
Check this out! So this graph is a graph of pressure and velocity, and what I want to do is I want to figure out how much pressure to put in the pressure vessel, how much of a vacuum to pull in the vacuum barrel here, and what velocities we get as a function of those things. So it's actually going to be like a 3D surface, but we're going to stick to the plywood method for now because we're in the field. We'll record all the data later.
Here's the thing, though. I've rented high-speed cameras, and I've actually called in a favor from Gavin. This is a V3610. I'll get you in the light here. This is a super fast high-speed camera: 36,000 frames per second. That's really, really fast! Over here, we've got Gavin's 4K high-speed camera; that's amazing! That's a Phantom VEO 4K. Trent's running all the data here, so he's a little stressed.
We've got four high-speed cameras patched into a network. There's George. George is helping with all kinds of stuff here. This is the V2511; this is the Smarter Everyday camera, and what we're going to do with this is we're going to look at the overall view, and as the baseball comes out here, we're going to track the velocity over time until it gets to the target.
For target effects, we have this: it's a V7510. This is a new high-speed camera, 75,000 frames per second. That's like stupid, stupid, stupid! Here is what we're shooting. I don't care what we hit. I just care about the velocity from there to there!
So I asked the patrons of Smarter Every Day—thank you very much for your support, patrons—what to hit, and they came up with some really strange things. I don't know what's wrong with the person that said we should do that! We've got five pounds of silly putty, we've got cake sprinkles, and we have more things in the back of my truck. I'll reveal those slowly as we go. That's just like the sugar on top, but this is where it's at.
Check this out! This is a boresight tool. Very important note here: removed before firing. What we can do with this is we can look down the shot path of the cannon, and we can aim in terms of inches! Now, that's really cool. So I don't know if I can view this; it's very hard to line up. But as you go down in here, yeah, look at that! So you can see where the baseball hit last time. That's cool; we're going to be able to aim much more accurately now.
Okay, so this is the goal: we're going to shoot the cannon, we're going to get the velocities as a function of pressure, and we're going to see what happens to baseballs once we get it into really weird aerodynamic regimes. So we're going to point the bore scope there; you're going to look through it. Yep, okay. So the question is, are we going to hit that? So that'll tell us if we're able to aim this thing. This is our datum; this is the beginning of the cannon right there, and then every five feet we've got it marked out.
We're going to put our target at about 30 something feet. When we do that first shot, no target, just camera. Check out—got a checklist today on the phone. Time to load a baseball. I forget how tight that is. All right, we put the plastic over here just so we can pull a vacuum. Start GH5s—confirm focus, battery, and card. You happy on GH5s, George?
Uh, I am. Confirmed Phantom buffers set correctly on all cameras. Okay, all right, time to pull a vacuum! Here we go! So we've got pressure here, we've got vacuum here. Um, we've got an offset of 0.8 as we start this one: minus 0.8. Oh God, it's pulling it fast; it's so great!
Okay, on the first shot, we're just going to do a checkout of the whole system. Nothing downrange; we're just going to fire the thing and make sure we can hit where we're aiming at. So we could do 300 PSI. Yes, I do. 300.
Okay, game time decision: first calibration shot, 300 PSI at about a minus 7.2 PSI vacuum. Ears on if you want them. I'm good; I'm good! Final pressure on this: 300 PSI, a vacuum of -8 on the gauge, which is about minus 7.2. Firing in three, two, one... two, one, one!
Okay, we've got our V2511 shot here from the side. It's 90 degrees to the flight line, which allows us to do some really cool measurements. The way we need to do this, though, is we have these little flags on the ground. We have 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 feet on the flags. So we can do this really cool thing where we measure how many inches each pixel is worth.
So if we say from there to there is 30 feet, which is 360 inches, that gives us a pixel calibration of 0.344 inches per pixel. Knowing this, we can now make measurements. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to say distance, angle, and speed from two points. I'm going to play until the ball exits the barrel. I'm going to take a first point here, and then because we can know how far this thing travels now, and we know how much time is in between each frame, we can get the actual speed of the baseball. It was going 917 miles an hour!
Oh, we can chart data now! Oh, where's—oh, right! Oh, data! It's exciting! All right, so that was 300 PSI, and we did 917 miles an hour. All right, I'm excited too; so happy about graphing!
So, I mean, look at my graph! It's amazing!
Okay, so... oh, did we—? We didn't...? Yeah, we did record the temperature and humidity, right? So 1.195 Mach, so Mach 1.2. So we've got 300 PSI Mach 1.2; we have our first data point. Look at it! It's right there; that's our data point! All right, that's a good data point! That's a great—that's one of my favorite data points! And that was at, uh, minus eight PSI on the barrel.
So if we fire this thing again with no vacuum in the barrel, we should get a lower velocity. So let's fire at 300 PSI with no vacuum on the front, and then if it does that, then we're starting to define the graph.
Okay, so I'm going to say—oh, I need to say that we had vacuum. Do you have a little pencil or something? I can—I can already tell that we're going to put this on the wall. Like, I can already tell! We don't have a pen. Oh, that's a black. All right, you can use this, but that's my pen.
Okay, I'll give it right back. So that is— that is about minus—so it was a minus eight on the vacuums to be about minus—minus 7.2 PSI barrel. Cool, 300 PSI tank feels legit! All right, that's great, man!
All right, so now let me put that data in the spreadsheet and then if I keep playing—if I keep playing this thing down here, it should be at a different velocity down here. So that should be lower, which would indicate drag: 831 miles an hour!
So we just defined the drag coefficient of a baseball from 917 miles an hour to about 825. I need to make another—I need to make another thing!
So yeah, so what I need to do is I need to draw one of these and go out here, and so we define the baseball curve out here. There's something funny about writing out zero to two thousand miles an hour, knowing that you might actually be able to do it on a piece of plywood.
And so I'm just going to draw a dotted line, and then we'll go back in, and we're trying to get all the data here, so we can get the complete drag of a baseball. Can I please see your PIN again? I'll be nice to it.
The curve shape means nothing; I just kind of drew something, and then I'll just fill this in as we go. We knew from before that from zero to 600 miles an hour has been done, and I'm assuming that was a spinning baseball. Who knows? This is not a spinning baseball; this is a knuckleball.
Okay, it is time for the first Smarter Every Day patron target suggestion. This is from Andrew Maxie, who suggests sprinkles. Andrew has been a patron since April; thank you very much for your support, Andrew! And what is this? What are you doing? You do not want to be here! This is not—no, come on! Come on! Oh, you're beautiful! I shall name you Sprinkles.
All right, why don't you stay over here and become a big, beautiful butterfly? That'd be great! Also, the lighting is incredible right now on you! Whoa! Oh, yeah! Super summit baseball cannon! Forgot! Oh, dude, it's so silly; it's like a weapon aimed at Sprinkles! [Laughter]
All right, here we go! All right, that's our sprinkle situation. We need to move it a little bit. Dustin, your audio is rolling for sure. Yes, my audio is rolling! Pickle switches in your hand? In my hand! Everyone's in the safe location, correct? Goggle time, everyone! Gargled! Always!
We've got sprinkle goggle issues this time; everyone be careful! Yeah, that's true. I wonder what it's going to smell like; it's gonna smell like ants.
Okay, here we go! Pressurizing 270, going to 300. Dude, this is supposed to be awesome! My heart's beating faster! Uh, 290! Oh, this is gonna be great! George, you ready?
Yep! 300! No, it's got to be 300! I want you—yeah, everybody ready? Rolling, rolling, rolling! I'm good! Okay, here we go! Shot two, say 300!
All right, here we go! Sprinkles, how you get ants? Three, two, one! Oh, there's the baseball!
All right, I got it! I do! So much happening right now! All right, this sprinkled slowed the baseball down! Okay, we didn't have a vacuum; oh, it smells like burnt sprinkles! Look at this! Oh! Oh, that's phenomenal! Look at that!
Okay, that's interesting; it just made candy! Hold on! Oh, it's like confectioner's sugar!
Oh, look at that! Gotta eat it, right? Have to! This just tastes like icing! The sugar is so finely ground!
Oh, interesting! Look at this! Oh, this is pretty! Look at this! Very interesting! Come look at the sugar! The sugar! You got your knife? You gotta do a taste test, dude! Get your knife right here!
Taste that! Is it real? It's good! That's 100% pure sprinkles, but it's been treated with a shock wave! Oh my gosh, that's good! This is unbelievable! Look at the 3610!
Wow, that's a lot happening! [Applause]
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Think about this; this is crazy! Momentum is conserved, right? So the ball is going straight in, and so the total momentum after the collision is equal to the total momentum before the collision. I mean, there's some inefficiency there, and it raises the temperatures. But that's why the ball goes to the right and the sprinkles go to the left!
So all these sprinkles that are slowly moving to the left, the sum of that velocity to the left of the parting line is equal to the sum of the velocity—velocity times mass—to the right parting line, right? Yes! This is a beautiful, like, galaxy collision simulation is what this is! Only sprinkles!
If you pause it, it almost looks like it's still moving! It's wild! All right, so Andrew's sprinkle idea was pretty good; I must admit.
Yeah, good job, Andrew! Oh man, I almost want to do that again and do it super, super tight! We have another one, don't we? We have another one! I don't know; do we do that, or we go to the next thing? Let's do the next thing!
So we shoot a jar of mayonnaise! Dude, have you looked at the wide? I'm just curious. Oh yeah, yeah, we gotta do the data! I'm sorry, okay, good! Yeah, that's right; I care about the data! That's the only thing we're doing here! So yeah, I got graphs!
Yeah, yeah, what are we doing here? We're graphing velocity versus pressure. There's drag's data time! All right, all right! Here we go! Math is happening; I'm trying to sound like a calculator! Calculator!
Okay muzzle velocity, any guesses? This is no vacuum. My guess is that it doesn't affect it. My guess is that it's lower! My guess is lower! What was the last shot at? 913 miles an hour? This time is 849. Yep, so it's lower! So Mach 1.1 right here!
Can I see your PIN again? Oh yeah, I didn’t—you know where I had to? It wasn't returned last time! Oh, I'm sorry! 300 PSI tank black means no pressure on the vacuum. And so that's Mach 1.1. The velocity at Target is 746. Okay, filling in the graph!
All right, I just plotted this; we were able to fill in 746 to 840 on our velocity charts! Now it's time—I say we shoot faster now!
All right, so we're doing well in our primary objectives. On our secondary objectives, it's starting to get weird! Joseph Robinson, I don't know what's wrong with you, but apparently we're gonna shoot a gallon of mayonnaise!
Thank you for supporting on Patreon! It's extra heavy mayonnaise! Shooting a gallon of mayonnaise with a supersonic baseball is weird, but I'm excited about it! We need to move that way! Move it up!
Oh wait, I can move the mayonnaise! We need to move the whole cannon or I could just do that! Supersonic baseball cannon versus mayonnaise! So just to be clear, three, two, one—sure!
Okay, turn the vacuum off! Okay, I'm on your account! Okay, three, two, one—five, two, one! Good gracious! Oh, there's so much mayonnaise out there; it turned white! There's a mistress!
Oh Joseph Robinson, what have you done? Oh dude, it's on the camera! It's on the camera! No mayonnaise on that camera! No mayonnaise on that camera! Do we have any mayonnaise on the drone? Drone looks good! Oh golly! I cannot describe the smell; it's like—oh no! Oh no, no, no, no, no, no!
Oh, the grass is slippery! Look, my shoes are oily! Okay, I hope it looks cool! Ahhhh! So we got the sprinkles mixed with mayo? Well, I guess this will keep our plate from rusting. Did the ball survive?
I don't know! I don't know why this made me sad! You sound upset! What's that? You sound upset! I don't know why it's so upsetting! Oh man, go down there and look at it, and you'll figure out why it's upsetting!
They got mayo on my drone! Did you really? Yeah, it stinks! Oh golly! And then instead of the Mavic, it's the Mayo!
I did not enjoy that! I just want my data! Does it explode in an interesting way? It's quite interesting! Dustin, where does it hit? Did we aim correctly? We hit dead center! Did we really?
Dead center! So three right here! Oh, I'm hanging! Oh God! Oh God! Is it visually stunning? Yes! Yes, it is! Dustin, something about that just felt weird!
You feel a little dirty? All right, all right! You want to see this? Oh no, wait, how about this? Look! Oh good old Ken's extra heavy mayonnaise! All right, are you ready? I don't think I am, actually!
Okay, I'm gonna fast forward and stop it! There's a shockwave! Dude, did you see this? It fired!
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Oh my gosh, that is amazing! Go away! Did you see the shockwave before it got there? We saw a shadow graph! I'm in your lap; I'm uncomfortable with this!
Look, look at that! Is that the plastic? What is this? It's a shockwave! That is amazing! So we made fire! We diesel! The mayonnaise is on fire! This is the best ever testament for Ken's extra heavy mayonnaise ever!
Dude, okay, you gotta go back, look at the shockwave first! Oh, I saw it! What is the red? Is that the—? This is the paint! Is it the stitches or the sticker ripping? It's the sticker stuff!
86 degrees Fahrenheit, 52% relative humidity, 29.86 inches of mercury!
Okay, so that was 75-10, 36-10.
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That is incredible! It looks like lips! Yeah, really big lips! Did you see that? No, I did not! Wow, look!
Okay, so everything is coming towards the camera, right? Yeah! And then when the gas hits—oh, I see, like a wall! Watch! Look at that! Watch! It's just—it's still doing it!
Yeah! It all stopped; it's all just like, it's no longer moving towards you! There it goes! Oh, they're popping!
I like, they're hitting the back—the back stuff! What's happening? They're hitting the backstop and popping! Look right here!
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
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Have you smelled it down there yet? Oh, I know, right? That's just nasty! I know! It is like, I don't want to touch it! You have to! I know! [Laughter]
That's awful! That poor backdrop!
That was so like, it was all like rainbow!
Oh, you see why I'm sad now? I do! You came back and you were so deflated! I get it! Data time! Math happening!
All right, so the muzzle velocity is 1,074 miles per hour! Target velocity: 968! We didn't quite overlap! So may I please have your PIN again?
I know! So that was 500 PSI! Thank you! 1.4 Mach! 1, 2, 3, 4! So that's what happens if you hit a jar of mayonnaise with a baseball at a size and 74!
Yes! Now we know! Obviously, that question has been answered finally!
All right, everything is happening according to what you would expect! So anyway, that's our— that's our new data point right there! Feel good about that! We are trending up, which is expected, obviously!
So good! This episode of Smarter Every Day is sponsored by Audible, and I love that fact because I get to tell you about an audiobook that means a lot to me! You might not know, but in that tire swing right there was the first time Smarter Every Day was ever sponsored!
I told you about a book by a guy named C.S. Lewis called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Well, I'm going to tell you about one today that's even cooler than that; it's called The Screw Tape Letters!
And this book's crazy! It's about a demon who's teaching a younger demon how to tempt a human! That sounds crazy because it is, and the book is awesome! You gotta check this out! You can get this by going to audible.com/smarter or texting the word smarter to 500-500.
Here's the deal, though: if you do that, you're gonna get an audible subscription! You get a book a month, but this is a part of the plus catalog! There's this whole section that are like extras, and you can pick whatever you want!
The Screw Tape Letters by C.S. Lewis! To my surprise, this audiobook is in the plus catalog, so you get it! Audible.com/smarter; text the word smarter; 500-500!
I go through this book with a bunch of dudes from my church; we listen to one of the screw tape letters, and then we talk about it for an hour! We do that every week; it's incredible! Go check this out! The Screw Tape Letters by C.S. Lewis; you will not be disappointed with this audiobook! It's very, very deep!
All right, so obviously we only did a few data point shots in this episode! It was just really interesting! So this is like a way to get started! We've got some more data points coming up! Some patrons have suggested some more things to shoot at!
It's fascinating! We got that silly putty I mentioned! We have some stuff I didn't tell you about! So please consider subscribing if you'd like to see that! Also, if you'd like to be a patron, I'd love to send you a baseball like this!
And if you have been a patron for a while, I've got something cool I'm going to send you as a way to say thanks for sticking around and being a patron for a while! Anyway, that's it! I'm Destin; you're getting smarter every day! Have a good one! You remember this club? Look at that! Yeah, anyway, have a good one! Bye!