1. How To Cheat in Baseball
BY: Ethan Hensel 4th period 12/8/2014

2. Does a corked wood bat hit further than a normal or a hollowed wood bat?

3. Background
I chose this project because I love baseball. I have always wanted to see if a corked bat would hit further than my wood bat. my grandfather has the equipment needed to cork a bat and offered to help me.

4. Hypothesis
If I cork a wood bat, and see how far I hit it off a tee, then the normal wood bat will still hit further.

5. Variables Independent: Type of bat normal or corked
Dependent: How far the ball was hit
Constants: Same baseballs,same field,and same tee height were maintained. The placement of the tee was changed with each phase to minimize wind.

6. Procedure
Get materials: wood bat,tee,baseballs, tool to measure distance,drill,cork
Measure 15 hits using the wooden bat
Compute the average distance and standard deviation of hits using the normal bat
Drill a hole 6 inches into the center of the wooden bat
Measure 15 hits using the hollowed wooden bat
Compute the average distance and standard deviation of hits using the hollowed wooden bat
Cork the bat by filling the hollowed section with cork
Measure 15 hits using the corked wooden bat
Compute the average distance and standard deviation of hits using the corked bat

7. Data
Bat Type
Average
Standard Deviation
Wooden Bat
84.10
15.57
Hollow Bat
84.34
15.85
Corked Bat
91.69
19.82

8. Graph

9. Pictures

10. Conclusion
My hypothesis at the beginning of the experiment was: If I cork a wood bat, and see how far I hit it off a tee, then the normal wood bat will still hit further.
To test my hypothesis I started by hitting baseballs with a normal wood bat and recorded the distance of 15 hits.Then, I did the same for the hollow bat and corked bat. The normal bat’s average hit distance was ft with a standard deviation of ft.The average hit distance for the hollow bat was ft with a standard deviation of ft. Finally, the average hit distance for the corked bat was ft. with a standard deviation of ft.

11. Conclusion (continued)
The data did not support my hypothesis since the average distance of the corked bat was 7 feet greater than either two bats. Therefore, the corked bat prevailed.
I learned that corked bats, the lightest bat used, had a hitting distance that was greater than a wood bat. One problem I had to manage was how to make sure that the wind didn’t affect the hit distance of the ball. The placement of the tee was changed to minimize wind in each test, but it was still a variable.
If I were to refine this experiment, I would use a pitching machine to determine if hitting a ball in motion, rather than from a tee, changes the result.