All this is me pitching a ball that's impossible to hit and I engineered it out of necessity because I'm facing off against the world's greatest whiffle ball players. Now, whiffle ball is the popular backyard version of baseball here in America What makes it really interesting is the balls have these holes on one side, which means they can curve like crazy. But how does that work? And how do baseballs or really balls from any sport actually curve through the air for that matter? Today we're going to test our way to find an answer to that question. And since I grew up playing countless hours of Wiffle ball myself, I'm going to revive a lifelong dream of going head-to-head against the pros.

and I don't want to give too much away, but I might have had to rely on my engineering skills to level the playing field. Now the whole idea for this journey of Discovery started with an impromptu visit to my childhood home in Brea California Last time I lived here was over two decades ago. so I'm just going to go Ambush him I Want a tour house? Hey, what's up I'm Mark How are you good? How are you good? I used to live here I Know Oh word got out so after meeting the whole family, they were kind enough to let me take a walk down memory lane. Oh my gosh, if these walls could talk, you know I used to keep my micro machines right in this little cabinet.

Here up there on the the roof is where me and Scott Glacier used to throw water balloons on my sister and her friend sunbathing down here. that's an option for you kids. I Also took the chance to confess that all the holes in their metal shed were Aaron shots from a homemade crossbow I fashioned in eighth grade there was a Target It wasn't very good at it apparently but what made me most happy to hear is how all the neighborhood kids still played out front all the time because that made look like just a street to some for us it was a soccer, hockey, basketball and baseball stadium were're long forgotten neighborhood Legends my and where I lived it was a skate park bro. we had the ramps and with on jumps and what.

each game always felt so big and the only thing that could stop us was when the street lights came on signaling it was time to go home for dinner and to my absolute Delight they let me hop in the game. I'm going to go ahead and call it right out of the gate and look I'm not going to say it myself, but were there some murmurs that Mark the long ball Legend Rober had returned I'm not going to deny it. it's just like old times. This is great even at the mound.

I was still slinging laser so got it and as invigorating as this was, it did make me question if I missed out on my true calling as a professional whiffleball player because you should know they're actually professional whiffle ball players. And while we share a very similar origin story, our history split paast when they kept the dream alive and turn those adolescent visions of grandor into the world's first pro whall in this is Kyle as an 11-year-old and now 14 years later as the league founder and commissioner, he told me every year starting in Spring eight teams compete in a 4-month season with players traveling from all over the country. there's a draft playoff a World Series And of course, for 14 years, they tracked every possible stat that is possibly trackable. as you'd expect, there's heated team rivalries and League Legends like Jimmy Norp aka the Nor Pedo who's considered by many to be the best pitching hitting dual threat in the league and as the backtack World Series Champ to see why none of them get paid to play.

So their truest compensation is the sheer thrill of victory in this game that has United them since childhood. He also told me they'd be playing in Oklahoma right around the time I'd be traveling through, I was finally going to get my chance to play Under The Lights in front of an actual crowd which meant it was time for the long ball Legend to refer to himself in the third person and make his professional debut and I was playing it cool. but right out of the gate I spotted the unmistakable flowing hair who's the best back to back champ in the house right here of Jimmy Captain Clutch North This was definitely the big leag so the whole difference is that we like to do 3v3 so we divided up into teams and it was game on. All right here you go.

What's the gold though? Kyle Connected early to get one man on so it was over to the Red Baron to make it too. Oh yeah, bar nice and that made it my turn. but I wasn't here to waste time just getting on bases Chad Don't you do Home run every time though? I'm going to go ahead and do it, calling the shot over the green monster with the street lights of my youth finally being replaced with a stadium lights I'd always dreamed of this was my uhoh what. That feels impossible to hit now just like in baseball in whiffle ball you get four balls and three strikes and it's a strike if it hits anywhere on the rectangular pipes or more embarrassingly, the metal plate in the middle.

I'm sorry team and with the crowd visibly unimpressed I Swapped with Kyle to pinch run at second base. Oh yeah. I Boogy I d no, no, no, let's go everywhere I Go! I'm getting out so we had two outs but now that I'd cleared the cobwebs out I Could just sense things were about to change. What is he going to swing? is he going to swing? I Don't get it.

Well I think we all know I was always more of a pitcher. Anyways, it was time to give these boys a little taste of old school. Suburban California Street ball because Jimmy Np's rain on Mount Olympus had come to an end. Whoops! You take a base on that wait Body Hit Do you get a base? Oh and with that absolute Dinger to center field Captain Clutch had struck again.

if somebody catches it without in the ground, is it insta out for everybody who's not on a B? Much love Felix and you chat jkx qcl that's Witchcraft and look I'm not proud of my performance, but in my unlike the West Coast ball I grew up playing in the pros. As you can see here, these pitches are moving 10 ft left to right. It's like the ball had propellers and it makes it nearly impossible to figure out if it's a pitch you should swing at or a pitch you should duck from. Or perhaps both.

How did he do that and the rest of the game unfortunately was just more of the same. Although I am proud to say in the third inning I finally got on base A and so despite all my best efforts, they narrowly edged us out for the win. This was not how it was supposed to happen. it was going to be a long plane ride home, but truthfully, a plan was already forming in my head to science the crud out of this and use my engineering abilities to level the playing field and step one was to fly Jimmy and Kyle out to Crunch Labs A part of me really wishes that baseball was fun to watch or play.

I I would be I'd be interested in baseball exactly how they can curve a ball as much as they do. Boring. After making a bunch of observations and Gathering a bunch of data myself, I then marched them straight over to the home of the San Francisco Giants cuz they're regarded as the team with the most advanced pitcher development program in all of Major League Baseball I'll take I'll take a word for it I'll take it word for it though. Wow, this feels pretty big and right out of the gate.

I Was incredibly relieved to see their elite players and coaches struggling against the nor pedo just as much as I did. but then it was into the clubhous purpose of the trip to meet with Brian banister whose deep understanding of the science behind a spinning baseball is sort of their secret sauce for all these great pictures and he's got the hardware to show when you use these Concepts series. And so after that I was feeling pretty good about my handle on how exactly they were making his final confirmation on my suspicions. We also met up with the Stanford Baseball team to run one last test with a normal baseball versus an identical one that was just missing the scene.

And as a further point of indication, I'm happy to report their nationally ranked batters also fell victim to Kyle and the Norpo. And so after my extensive data collection, research and interviews, here's the answer as to how any sort of ball curves through the air and it starts with a riddle. Let's say you're an astronaut on the space station, go out for a spacewalk to fix a solar panel with your big wrench, and as you're heading out, you get distracted by The View and misg grabbing the handle and now you're very slowly drifting away. What do you do to save yourself? bre backward, Say: Well, you just sort of swim your way back, but in zero gravity as demonstrated here by an actual astronaut.

You can flail your arms all you want, but your center of mass won't actually move all right. So did you think of the answer? The trick is you throw the wrench as fast as possible in the opposite direction and that will give you just a little push to slowly move you back to the space station. And this makes intuitive sense, right? Like if you're on a skateboard and you throw something heavy to the right, you're going to move back to the left. Nate you had one job.

Well, this is exactly how Rockets move. move around in space where there's no air. They create a chemical reaction from their fuel to make a lot of tiny wrenches and they just throw them out of the back really fast. and the rocket naturally has to go the other way just like you as an astronaut.

So that's one thing you need to know. the other is the Kanda effect Wa this kind of interesting wait a minute. I'm just kidding, it's the fluids like to surface. You actually already know this.

If you've ever noticed how water will flow around, a curved spoon is also a fluid and so it curves just like water. As you can see here because the strings are following with the air flow as it turns the round corner on the Frisbee. Okay, so now let's put those two concepts together. From the ball's perspective, air is rushing past on the top side here and curving around really nicely because the rotation of the ball matches great with the air flow.

but on the bottom side, they're opposite. so there's sort of a head-on collision with the air rushing. by creating turbulence, that means more air curves around the top, which means more little air wrenches are thrown diagonally down and as a result, the back spun ball moves diagonally up just like the astronaut causing it to curve up. The fancy term for this is the Magnus effect and big light balls like beach balls are great for demonstrating its effect because they have lots of surface area so they throw off lots of wrenches.

but they're also really light so the air wrenches have more of an effect. And now that you know this, you know exactly what causes the curve on tennis balls, soccer balls, ping pong balls, record-breaking basketballs, golf balls, and base balls. With the baseball, the seams help grab even more air wrenches as the ball spins, but they also provide the pitchers a better grip. spin the ball even faster our they choose a direction and it puts spin against the direction and it goes boom versus smooth Ball Test confirmed this when the normal baseball, the SC was curving so much.

By the way, this same principle is how frisbee seem to defy gravity because air curves over the smooth edge, throwing wrenches down all around, turning it into a freaking jet. Yeah, that you should know that the whiffle ball is similar yet slightly different than all of those. As long as you scuff up the side with the holes, which is something all serious players will do then by comparison, this side is now much smoother. That means the air has a much easier time curving around like water on a smooth spoon, throwing down the inches, causing the ball to lift towards the smooth side anding speed footage.

We see that in every case the ball is curving towards the smooth CH Iing guys, it's Boom! So then it goes and it's and away from the holes. So now whenever you see a ball curving, just think of tiny little astronaut wrenches flying off the back of the ball as it spins through the air. And now that I knew their secrets to ball curvature, it was time to use that knowledge to engineer some. Sweet Revenge with an 18-second build.

Montage Hey hey, and so it was back to Oklahoma with the duffel bag full of surprises addressed specifically for Jimmy Nor. But before we get to that, you might have notice. Crunch Slabs has a new addition my backyard. That's because to fight summer brain drain and make this your least boring summer ever, we created Cam Crunch Slabs Now Camp Crunch Slabs is a 12we virtual Summer Camp featuring weekly videos with Mega Experiment is number one.

I Took the opportunity of admiring my new gift to avoid making eye contct Torpedo and his tactics of intimidation. Got a bag of stuff here. Should be a little bit better than last time. play ball.

The rematch was officially on all right. I'm at the mound, let's go and word must have spread cuz an even larger crowd had gathered to watch. Playing with the pros had been my childhood dream. yet my last outing was close closer to a nightmare.

so I Decided to give them a small taste of what they could expect for round two and wound up to deliver the hot steamy appetizer. Dinner is served. Now all I had to do was retrieve and reload the brass slug because if you preload a brass cylinder against a spring in a 3D printed ball like this and then take apart a $1 kitchen timer and harvest the geared Mech hemispher, you get a 1 and 1/2 second delay. Until this screw rotates and releases a spring-loaded plug just like an astronaut wrench and that alters the trory in midair, making it impossible to predict where to swing.

And as you can see, unpredictability is a pitcher's best friend. Unfortunately, after just two strikes, they found my achilles heal and rendered the ball useless, which is exactly why you always have a backup plan. o Just missed the strike out. This one used the same kitchen timer geared mechanism only this time.

the two whiffle ball hemispheres were pre-loaded against each other with the spring, so after the one and 1 half second delay, your hitting options went from one good one to two bad ones, which was just enough to secure my very first strikeout. Unfortunately, the crafting Oredo deduced correctly that by simply stepping forward, they could make contact before the ball had time to split. Wait a minute, which meant it was time for The Backup Backup plan the Whiffle Copter and you might think now I'm just being a bit cheeky. but I did a thorough reading of the rules and it's a strike if it hits anywhere on the pipe or metal plate above the two legs.

but it makes no mention of front or back. Let's go, let's go exploiting loopholes. Hit it. Unfortunately, my smugness was shortlived cuz you don't become a professional whiffle ball player without a tremendous amount of hand ey coordination.

So with two Runners on, it was time to level things up with this: 3D Printed Triple 10,000 RPM Fly wheeled monstrosity of a personal pitching machine aka the demogorgan. Now the demogorgan is calibrated to launch his cruise missiles at just under the 74 mph speed limit on well, that's a gun, but okay, the problem is that kind of speed requires a lot of flowing electrons and battery power soon became a concern and that's just not a position you want to find yourself in with. Captain Clutch at the plate. Sadly, giving them the first lead of the game and I was concerned things would start to get away from me.

but thankfully Jimmy can't take every app back and after a popup and a routine catch by the Red Baron I'd survived the first inning with only one allowed run to show for it for the first time. I was feeling good about our chances which meant it was time to show the world. I was more than just a picture. oh how even hit that though? that's what that's fcking dumb sh, no, how is that possible? So it was another strikeout but then Baron got on base followed by Kyle with an absolute bomb to center field.

Let's go straight over the Green Monster which meant suddenly we were up 1 to2 for the first time ever we were in the lead and at this rate impossible to hit this. the Yeah! I Struck out again but we were still winning and with the final play of the inning Baron Capitalized on a bad throw to Second for a potential inside the park home run. but there's a major league whiffle ball rule where the strike zone doubles as the catcher so if you don't beat the throw home, then you're out and heading into the second inning. I was fresh out of batteries so we had Kyle take them out and after two strikes they got on base or at least they would have if first base didn't go.

Rogue and now the first base had a taste for Freedom going free range with the top speed to 50 mph I Decided to bring him back after seeing the nored was next cuz there was plenty more where that came from. but my dreams were crushed when he just gped it out of the park. Oh come on, come on! And now the game was tied and Jimmy had clearly demonstrated he's a sore winner on the next play. they hit one deep and were threatening to score again.

but I had a short circuited first base that needed of course another gun of course I mean and with them ahead, 3 to2 headed into the bottom of the second. this was the perfect time for my lucky bat. Okay dude, and just as I'd hop The increased surface area put me on first base and with a little teamwork I scored a run and we would have kept it going if someone wouldn't have struck out Baron Oh my gosh. Okay, fine me too.

So we headed into the final inning tied at three and we kept K even though he said his arm wasn't at full strength and of course Captain Clutch took full advantage on the first pitch so I volunteered to take over pitching duties. The problem was I had run out of gimmick Whiffle balls and gimmick personal pitching machines but thanks to the power of pneumatics I hadn't run out of gimmick strike zones which gave my floater a bit more room to work with. So after getting one out with the generous Strike Zone some good oldfashioned hustle got us the second, but with Jimmy a bat and knowing what was at stake, one of their players disconnected the airline which honestly felt a little like cheating. but I took the high road and let it slide this time I was really out of Tricks it was just me versus Captain clutchn himself mono Imano and on my first pitch I got him on the delayed Riser My second Pitch got him with my modified slider if Pros even hit those ball I was really going to do this I would need to rely on everything I had learned on this journey of Discovery why don't they put the and that was strike three I had struck out the world's greatest whiffle ball player and earning that subtle nod of mutual respect from the Norpo sort of felt like a Michael passing the torch to K type of moment and down by one.

headed into our final at bat. it lasted about as long as it took to immediately strike me out. Again, that wasn't cool, why not let the ball? The game wasn't over yet, but instead of the two runs we needed to win, we quickly got two outs. but Baron kept our hopes alive with the base hit and by some absolute miracle, I finally got a real hit fair and square where oh yeah, me and Baron on second and third let go.

Well, doesn't he have to touch touch the thing yet? So it all came down to Kyle and as soon as I saw contact, I knew it wasn't enough to clear the wall. So I started my Mad Dash with my sight set on home plate. It was a risky move, but I knew it would mean victory for our team with Jimmy taking the cut off at second The Gauntlet was thrown his arm versus my leg. Okay dude, more tricks.

Oh okay, okay, well may me just one more trick with a blast of air at 100 PSI Their catcher was nowhere to be found, clearing my triumphant return to that most beautiful of white rubber pentagons. Interesting. As we celebrated the game, it almost felt like at any moment. the streets I Kind of enjoyed.

uh, learning about the the air on the B Time to head home for dinner and I was reminded of a truth that feels like Jimmy and Kyle and all of their buddies have never lost side of finding something you're truly passionate about that brings you Joy is one of life's most lovely gifts. Could you make me some thanks? If you're lucky enough to have found it, you should protect and cherish it like your most prized possession. Have you ever seen a firewood chopping robot? Well now you have. And while he can chop more than just when you think of the modeling industry, the first thing you TR I'm that.

Oh dude, my Contraption is going to break I Got to figure out a way to make this this thing actually work. Seem to shake it? Wait on my chance. I Can't fake it life So oh sometimes it feels just like a TR I keep pushing what's up here? We go now.