Measure impact force?

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crafty184
 
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Measure impact force?

Post by crafty184 »

A couple my students are designing an excellent experiment that requires them to measure the impact of a baseball under certain conditions.

How could we measure the impact of a ball hitting something? In other words, imagine you had a sensor inside the catcher's glove to measure the force of impact of the ball on the glove. Of course, for safety we won't have a person catching, but rather a sensor on a wall where the ball hits (thrown from a pitching machine for safety). We want to measure that impact force of ball on wall/board/etc.

Thanks!

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Measure impact force?

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

An accelerometer would be the sensor of choice. If you embed it in the target, the sensor will measure the acceleration due to the impact. If you know the mass of the ball and the target, you can calculate the impact force using Newton's Laws.

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