Audio Tours (from The Sound of Science)

In this project you will create an actual or simulated audio tour.

Actual Tours: This is the audio accompaniment for a physical visit. Actual tours can be for places such as a botanical garden, a power plant, or a dam.

Simulated Tours: These can be for places such as the digestive track, an active volcano, or the moons of Saturn.

Audio Tour: Actual (See Example Below: The Physics of Baseball)

The seven steps of an actual audio tour:1. Find a place that relates to your field-- for example: a botanical

garden, a hosptial, a room in a hospital, a museum, a factory, a lake, or park.

2. Create a narration of the salient features for someone to listen to as they walked through it.

3. Add background information about each of the salient features4. Add sound effects or field recording samples5. Add interviews or quotes from other people who have

experience with the place6. Add music at the beginning, during the pauses, the end, or

during the entire tour7. Mix

Audio Tour: SimulatedThe seven steps of a simulated audio tour:

1. Think of a place that relates to your field that you could not get to- for example: the digestive tract, the moons of Saturn, a live volcano.

2. Create a narration of the salient features for someone to listen to as they moved through it.

3. Add background information about each of the salient features4. Add interviews or quotes from people with exertise or

experience5. Add sound effects when helpful6. Add music at the beginning, during the pauses, the end, or

during the entire tour

7. Mix

The Physics of Baseball at a Baseball Field (Outline)

Listen to Final Audio Example Here https://soundcloud.com/cs272/the-physics-of-baseball-audio

Narration NotesToday we’re going to take a special tour. It will be a look at some of the physics of baseball--let’s start with a baseball field.

Music Starts

I’m standing here in Memorial Park in Maplewood NJ. I’m in the baseball field 5. Let’s start at home plate. You should have your ear buds in, and I’d like you to put on your ‘physics’ glasses—metaphorically speaking.

Pause music louder

Batter up. So, when you hit a ball does it matter how firm your grip is?

Bat hitting ball sound

Does it matter if your hands are tightly clenching the bat or if they are loosely around the bat’s handle.?

According to Alan M. Nathan Professor Emeritus of Physics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—It doesn’t matter.

Once bat meets ball, the grip is no longer important. When the ball impacts the barrel of the bat, a wave is created in the bat that moves down the axis of the bat toward the knob, reflects off the end (or the hands, if they are there), then moves back to the barrel again. However, the ball-bat collision is very rapid, about 1 ms or less.

By the time the wave reflects back to the impact point on the bat, the ball has long since gone.

So the grip is basically an afterthought once the bat hits the ball.

PauseNow let’s assume we’ve hit a nice line drive into left center. We run to first base and, we’re going to go to second base. It’s going to be close, and we need to decide whether it’s better to slide head first or feet first into second base.

Sliding into base sound

According to David Peters, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis, headfirst has the edge. Your arms are lighter than legs, which means as the body rotates, arms extend out a bit farther than the legs. For another thing, the feet give an extra push.

Let’s close the inning and put on our glove and take a run out to center field.

Music fades to Old Baseball Game

There’s a batter up and he gives the ball a whack…right to the centerfield wall. Of course, what’s going through our mind now is “What Kind of baseball was pitched” Was it the flat seamed ball used in professional games or a raised seam ball used in college games.According to an October 2013 story in Baseball News, the NCAA Bat Certification lab at Washington State and the Rawlings Research lab have concluded a study about the “drag effect” of the flat-seam ball used in pro baseball vs. the raised-seam ball used in college baseball.

Bat hitting ball sound

A machine shot out both types of balls at 95 mph with a spin rate of 1,400 RPM and a launch angle of 25 degrees—the conditions to simulate a home run.

The research shows that there is a significant drag effect in raised-seamed balls—the ones used in college games.

And, the longer a ball travels, the greater the drag effect. The raised-seam ball traveled an average of 367 feet, while the flat-seam professional ball traveled an average of 387 feet. This difference would increase the harder the ball was hit.

There are currently efforts to get the flat seemed balls in college play to make the games more exciting with more homeruns.

Old Baseball Game

Well that’s our short physics of baseball tour. It’s back to the dugout.

Happy hitting.

fades, Section of Music

The music Billy Murray & Haydon Quartet - Take Me Out to the Ballgame and the Broadcast of Old Time Radio Game 2 of the 1936 World Series are both from the Archive.org

Music “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and World Series

Notes on Citation

In the narration I provided enough information for a listener to find the information through a Web search. I couldn’t fit information about the music and broadcast in the regular narration, so I included it at the end. Citing the sources of the information about the physics of baseball came more natural in the text, so I didn’t feel a need to add citations at the end.

Here are links to the full sources.

Nathan, A.M. (May 2012). The role of the batter’s grip in the baseball-bat collision. From The Physics of Baseball. Retrieved September 15, 2013 from http://baseball.physics.illinois.edu/grip.html

Peters, D. as cited by Roach, J. (2013). The math and science of baseball. From Today’s Tech. Retrieved October 12, 2013 from http://www.today.com/id/39446333/ns/today-today_tech/t/math-science-baseball/

Baseball News (October, 2013). Flat seam balls travel faster. Retrieve October 16, 2013 from http://baseballnews.com/flat-seam-baseballs-travel-further/