Techniquest

Exhibit: Pitch Perfect

Can you strike out the batter or will he score a home run? Throw a ball as fast as you can, then see the speed of your throw on the screen.

Impress everyone with your throw, but bear in mind that the world’s fastest throw was 105 mph!

Pitch Perfect measures the speed of your throw by using a speed sensor, this sends out a form of light, which can’t be seen by your eyes. The light travels in a wave, like a wave in the sea. When it hits a moving object, like your ball, it bounces off but is now shorter than before, this is called the ‘Doppler Effect’ and when the wave returns back to the sensor it can measure the length of the wave and tell us the speed of the ball.

If you have an accurate and fast throw maybe you should try sports like Baseball or Rounders.