The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1913-08-07
PERFECT SPHERES
With All His Scientific Skill Man
Cannot Produce Them.
tHE cURvING OF A BASEBALL.
It Is Possible Only Because the Ball ls
an Imperfect Globe and In compari-
son With It's Size Much Rougher
Than the Surface of the Earth.

|
be thrown so that it will describe won
derful curves during rs progress
through the air is that every such ball
has a surface made up of mountains,
valleys, craters. canyons gorges plains
and other irregularities of the surface
that. when the difference in size is
rken into consideration. makes the
surface of the earth seem like plate
glass.
| If it were possible to make perfect
tphere-if it were possible to make a
baseball with an absolutely smooth sur
face and an exact sphere-no pitcher
in the wO: Id could make it curve The
very best pitchers baseball has ever
known or probably ever will know
could not make the ball deviate a hairs
breadth in its fight.
| And so while it Is partly in the art
or knack the professional pitcher has
in holding and releasing the baseball
as he throws it. it is also due to the
fact that n baseball has wonderfully
rough surface against which the air
catches and turns 1t that gives 1t the
curve.
1t you pass your hand over plate
glass it moves smoothly with nothing
to retard it. If you pass your hand
over an unpaned board you can feel
the roughness--splinters we call them
You cannot move your hand as easily
over the board. This is the same piin-
ciple with the baseball There is Il
roughnesS in it's surface that catches
| in the air and forces one side about or
retards that side. This has but one
result-to make the baseball leave its
straight course. and in doing this it de-
| scribes Il curve.
| This does not detract in the least
| from the cleverness of the pitcher who
can so accurately Judge his muscular
control as to make a baseball curve up
or down. right or left. But the fact
remains that it is the roughness of the
baseball that makes all his pitching
cleverness possible.
| Take brand new league ball In
your hand. 1t looks to be perfect
sphere-that is, absolutely even and
uniformly round and as smooth as
glass" And it may be as smooth as
glass. for glass also has Il rough sur
face.
Put a baseball under the most pow
| erful microscope. enlarge it MICROSCOPE
cally 10000 diameters. and what do
you see? The very thing mentioned in
the first paragraph of this article. The
| surface is rough 1t looks like the
landscape in the Alps or Yellowstone
park or any other rough section of the
earth. 1t has peaks, ranges. ridges.
valleys. plains and holes. gulches and
all sorts of uneven places. and If the
earth could be made as small as
baseball it would be practically a per-
feet sphere and absolutely smooth.
This is because the highest mountains
of the earth and the deepest valleys
would be millions upon millions of
times smaller in comparison with the
rough uneven places on baseball If
either the earth were reduced to the
size of baseball or baseball enlarg-
| ed to the size of the earth.
| If this were not true the earth would
not revolve so regularly upon its axis
! 1t would perform an 'in shoot or
/ "out shoot" and curve off through
| space.
Even the billiard ball has a surface
much rougher in comparison to its size
than the surface of the earth. and we
refer to a billiard ball as about the
smoothest thing known. "As smooth
as a billiard ball" Is well known
simile. For the same reason that a
perfectly smooth baseball could not be
| curved. perfectly smooth and per-
fectly round billiard ball could not be
made to curve on the table. 1t would
not take English" as billiard players
call 1t when they make ball go for
direction just by the manner in which
they strike It with chalked cue.
This fact Of roughness causing 1t to
spin becomes all too evident when
player forgets to chalk his cue and
plays several shots thereafter. If the
leather tip of the cue becomes shiny
1t will slip on the ball. There is no
purchase with which it can take hold.
But chalk is sticky stuff. and the gran
ules are large. so that well chaIked
| cue has a very rough surface. and this
rough surface of the tip OF the cue fits
into the rough projections on the ball,
and thereby a ball can be given a lot
of twist. In order to accomplish this
successfully. moreover. the billiard
cloth nap must be new and therefore
rough.
During recent experimentation with
regard to the kinetic theory of gases
Belgian scientist desired to find out
how perfect sphere could be made In
order that by the clashing of these to
gether an idea might be secured OF the
effect OF the collisions of the spherical
atoms that make up gas The prof.
ect had to be abandoned az last be
cause no machinery could be construct
ed that would turn out perfect
sphere artifcially. and nature has no
! perfect sphere of large size in all her
! many forms Of matter. Perfect disks