How High Can You Throw a Baseball? A Tennis Ball? A Football? A Golf Ball?

Areas of Science	Sports Science
Difficulty
Time Required	Short (2-5 days)

*Note: For this science project you will need to develop your own experimental procedure. Use the information in the summary tab as a starting place. If you would like to discuss your ideas or need help troubleshooting, use the Ask An Expert forum. Our Experts won't do the work for you, but they will make suggestions and offer guidance if you come to them with specific questions.

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Abstract

How high can you throw different types of balls, like a golf ball, a basketball, and a football? Would one of them go higher than the others? Do factors like mass, shape, and volume influence the final height? You can measure the approximate maximum height a thrown ball reaches by measuring the time it spends in the air.

To do this project, you'll need at least one ball and a helper with a stopwatch. Your helper should start timing just as you release the ball, and stop right when the ball touches the ground. The height, h (in meters), can be calculated from the time aloft, t as follows:

h = 4.9 × (0.5 × t)²

For height in feet, change "4.9" in the above equation to "16". (Wiese, 2002, 20-22.)

Advanced project idea: If you've taken high school physics, you should be able to derive the equation above for yourself. Can you develop an explanation for how high you can throw different balls based on the forces acting on the balls?

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MLA Style

Science Buddies Staff. "How High Can You Throw a Baseball? A Tennis Ball? A Football? A Golf Ball?" Science Buddies, 28 July 2017, https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/Sports_p035/sports-science/how-high-can-you-throw-a-ball. Accessed 14 Dec. 2019.

APA Style

Science Buddies Staff. (2017, July 28). How High Can You Throw a Baseball? A Tennis Ball? A Football? A Golf Ball? Retrieved from https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/Sports_p035/sports-science/how-high-can-you-throw-a-ball

Last edit date: 2017-07-28

Bibliography

Wiese, J., 2002. Sports Science: 40 Goal-Scoring, High-Flying, Medal-Winning Experiments for Kids. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.

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Experimental Procedure

For this science project you will need to develop your own experimental procedure. Use the information in the summary tab as a starting place. If you would like to discuss your ideas or need help troubleshooting, use the Ask An Expert forum. Our Experts won't do the work for you, but they will make suggestions and offer guidance if you come to them with specific questions.

If you want a Project Idea with full instructions, please pick one without an asterisk (*) at the end of the title.

Ask an Expert

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Abstract