Can You Hit a Curveball? Can You Even See One?

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Johannah Cornblatt

By Johannah Cornblatt

Baseball fans have been enjoying a great World Series marked by exceptional pitching and some notably iffy offense. Yankees slugger Mark Teixeira, who led the American League this year in home runs and RBI, was hitting a meager .105 through the first five games. His Phillies counterpart, Ryan Howard, who led the National League in RBI the last two seasons, has been equally woeful, batting just .158 so far. We can only speculate about the underlying reasons for this power outage, and both players could turn things around before the Series ends. But could their struggles at the plate be traced, at least in part, to problems transitioning from foveal to peripheral vision? In other words, are curveballs driving them nuts? Arthur Shapiro from American University, Zhong-Lin Lu from USC, and two colleagues won first place in the Vision Sciences Society's Best Visual Illusion of the Year contest for this very cool animation, which offers a theory about how the human eye perceives curveballs. To better understand why batters can't always trust what they see, follow the instructions and read the brief explanation.

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Member Comments

Posted By: jennajean (November 4, 2009 at 7:15 PM)

Eyes are mysterious things, I always wonder about them. If you focus one thing and close your left eye and then open your left eye and close your right eye the object you are focusing in on are in two different places. So freaky. Makes sense about curveballs.

http://www.ifeelyaophelia.com

Jenna Jean

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