Physics of the Torpedo Bat: Finding the Location of the Sweet Spot

Everyone is talking about the NY Yankees and their use of a new “torpedo bat”. It’s basically a bat that is wider and then tapered at the end (like a torpedo). The idea is that this bat optimizes the sweet spot while increasing the contact area. This makes it easier to get “good” hits and win games (I guess).

I really don’t know much about baseball, but I know something about physics (sometimes). So, what is a sweet spot and how do you find it?

Stick and Ball Center Collision

In physics, we like to make simplified situations of problems. Swinging a bat and hitting a ball can be quite complicated. So, instead we can consider a simpler situation.

Imagine a baseball bat is just a plain stick. The stick is at rest on a frictionless surface (like it’s sitting on ice). Along comes a baseball and hits the stick right in the center. Here’s what that looks like (don’t worry, I will go over the details of making this animation at the end).

The ball comes in and there is an interaction between the stick and ball. During this interaction, the ball exerts a…