Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. From testing the strength of cardboard to the science of discovering the best baseball bat, students hit it out of the park with their experiments at the East Lake science fair. On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside the science fair to have some fun with fifth graders who take their problem solving projects very seriously.

Okay. We're here with JP in his Yankees uniform telling us about aluminum versus wood bats in his science project. Tell me, let's jump right into it.

JP:
So this is aluminum versus wood baseball bat. And the reason why I did this project is because I'm on a very competitive baseball team, so I'd like to know which bat hits the furthest. So then I can have the most chances of hitting a home run every time I get up to bat. Right? So my research was that the metal bat isn't allowed to be used in the MLB because they think that they'll hit it over too much. This is the metal bat, I mean the maple bat. And they think that it's a perfect bat for the MLB, like not too good that they'll hit over every time, but not too bad that they won't.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, so they actually want the maple bat so that they can't hit it quite as far?

JP:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
They want it to be good enough, but not too good.

JP:
Yes, exactly. And this is the Ash bat. It takes a lot of strength to hit it over with the Ash bat.

Anthony Godfrey:
This is the Ash bat?

JP:
Yes. And they found that this is the one that the MLB used to use. Like Babe Ruth used to use an Ash bat and stuff. So, I found, so my hypothesis was that the metal bat went the furthest, the maple bat the second furthest, and the Ash was the third furthest. You can tell from my graph that my hypothesis was correct. That the metal bat hit the furthest, the maple bat the second furthest and the Ash bat, the third furthest.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now you obviously know your baseball history. Why do you think Babe Ruth used an Ashwood bat?

JP:
Well, because they didn't know about the maple bat back then. So I think that they used the maple bat, I mean the Ash bat, because they didn't know about the maple bat. So they're like, well, let's just get any wood that we see and let's just turn it into a bat. So then they can hit with.

Anthony Godfrey:
I see. Now, are you allowed to use Ash if you wanted to?

JP:
Yes. In the MLB, you are allowed to use Ash, but you're not allowed to use the metal.

Anthony Godfrey:
Are you allowed to use metal in your league?

JP:
Oh yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
And so you do use the metal?

JP:
I do use the metal.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yes. Okay. All right. Very good.

JP:
So in conclusion, I found that the metal bat is the most dense and that it hits the furthest. And because it's the furthest, the bat speed is very good. And it will hit the ball further.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now I'm looking at the graphic here, the map of where each ball landed on the baseball field. Did you hit all of these balls that you recorded?

JP:
Yes, I did. And we graphed them out and we had a radar gun to measure how fast the ball went.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, a radar gun?Where did you get a radar gun? Do you just have that regularly to measure the pitches and that sort of thing?

JP: