Steroid use can stimulate home run production in baseball
According to a study by Tufts University physicist Roger Tobin, a specialist in condensed matter physics with a long-time interest in the physics of baseball, the use of steroids may stimulate home run production in baseball.
It was noted that the usage of steroids by a Major League Baseball slugger can boost home run production by as much as 50 percent though there may be just modest improvements in muscle mass and bat-and-ball speed.
From News-Medical.Net:
Tobin reviewed previous studies of the effect of steroid use and concluded that muscle mass, the force exerted by those muscles and the kinetic energy of the bat could each be increased by about 10 percent through the use of steroids. According to his calculations, the speed of the bat as it strikes the pitched ball will be about 5 percent higher than without the use of steroids and the speed of the ball as it leaves the bat will be about 4 percent higher.
To determine the ultimate impact on home run production, Tobin then analyzed a variety of models for trajectory of the baseball, accounting for gravity, air resistance and lift force due to the ball’s spin. While there was considerable variation among the models, “the salient point,” he says, “is that a 4 percent increase in ball speed, which can reasonably be expected from steroid use, can increase home run production by anywhere from 50 percent to 100 percent.”
It was remarked by Tobin that the explosion in terms of home run production with the dawn of the “steroid era” in sports in the mid-1990s and dropped when steroid testing was instituted by the Major League Baseball.
