StarTalk Radio - Things You Thought You Knew – The Fast and The Friction

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

What is the Magnus Effect? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore physics through spin, banking, and angular momentum. Why are race tracks banked? NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/things-you-thought-you-knew-the-fast-and-the-friction/Photo Credit: Brandon Zeman, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. You're a personal astrophysicist. Got with me my two co-hosts, Gary O'Reilly. Gary. Hi, Neil. Alright. Always good to have you guys here.

And Chuck Nice, of course. Hey, hey, hey. What's happening, guys? So I, just to be clear, I engaged in high school and intercollegiate athletics. Gary was a professional soccer player in the UK. And Chuck, you've done no organized sports. I have watched sports, sir. Okay.

You've watched organized sports? I have watched sports, sir. Okay. You've watched organized sports. And I have also thrown several Super Bowl parties, which is organizing sports. That counts. So this counts. All right. That's right. That's why we have you on here. So what we're going to do this episode is have some things you thought you knew, or maybe things you didn't think you knew. And this is a spinoff of a very successful format from our StarTalk flagship podcast. And so we're going to do three different topics that you might have thought you knew about, but maybe you didn't.

Are you guys okay with that? We're good. Oh, yeah. Let's do it. So I want to lead off with something in baseball called the rising fastball. Aha. The rising fastball.

Very hard to hit. Very hard to hit. Because you see the ball coming in, and you're ready to swing for it, and you always swing underneath it. And because you think it's going to be somewhere where it isn't, of course, that's the whole point of what the pitcher is trying to do. The whole point is to fool the batter in whatever way they can.

But I just wanted to focus in this particular moment on the rising fastball. So the batter describes the ball as rising, rising up from whatever, wherever they saw they thought it was going to be. But, of course, gravity doesn't work that way. Unless the pitcher is a Jedi. Gravity doesn't work that way. And old-timers among us, old-timer Americans, so Gary might not know this, back in the 1970s,

they lowered the height of the pitcher's mound to give a better advantage to the batters. Right. And I forgot how much was it, six, just a few inches. Why don't you just get shorter pitchers? That would be the same effect. You know who was short was the pitcher for the Red Sox, Pedro, what was his last name?

I just knew him as Pedro. Pedro Martinez? Martinez, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was relatively short for pitchers, for as good a pitcher as he was. And you're thinking you've got to be tall to have the good sort of arm angle and all of this. So pitchers, so Gary, you want short pitchers,

but they're not easy to come by, right? You know, some of the most dominating pitchers have all been tall. Randy Johnson. Randy Johnson among them. Yeah, he was a giant. Imagine, you think about the length of lever that they're able to bring to a pitch, and then you've got the vertical aspect and him stood on a mound, even if you lowered it.

Yes. He showed up for practice. They were like, you're in the wrong sport, man. You're in the wrong sport. The basketball court's that way. Then they found out he couldn't jump. So I said, okay, you stay right where you are. Do you remember seeing that video of him pitching

and he completely vaporized a pigeon that flew across the pass? Yes, I saw that. A pigeon flew across and there was nothing left of the pigeon. Now, that was, I mean, if you had to die, you know, a Randy Johnson fastball, completely obliterating. What are the chances

of that actually happening? Whatever those chances are, he nailed it. It happened. It happened. It happened. I tell you. Listen, that pigeon is more famous than Captain Sully Sullenberger Geese, that's for sure. Right, right, right. Yeah, there's basically, now, birds are not sturdy objects, right? They have to be light enough to fly.

Their bones are very fragile. The bones are basically hollow. Hollow. They have to be hollow, yeah.. Their bones are very fragile. The bones are basically hollow. They have to be hollow, yeah. Yeah, otherwise they'd be... So if you take the energy of a Randy Johnson fastball and ask what happens when you deposit that much energy into a pigeon, there's basically no pigeon left.

You have a feathered pillow. That's what you need. That's right, some feathers for a pillow. That's it. That's all that's left. So getting back to the rising fastball. So here's the point. So in the 1970s, they lowered the mound.

I think it was the 70s. Yep, they lowered the mound to bring some advantage back to the batter so that the pitcher's not towering over you, plus with their fully outstretched arm, and they're pitching sort of down to you, all right, rather than straight at you. All right, so that helped a little bit. But like you said, Gary, you know, a shorter pitcher would have had the same effect as lowering the mound. So what it did, it put shorter pitchers at a disadvantage, okay, relative to taller pitchers where they didn't even make a difference. So make a long story short.

As you know, you can put a spin on a ball, and as long as the ball is thrown through an atmosphere, such as what we have on Earth, then the arc of the ball will veer from what would be normal to the force of gravity, from what you'd expect, giving purely the force of gravity acting on the object, which is why you cannot have curveballs on the moon. It will not work, okay?

You cannot have rising fastballs on the moon. It will not work. All of these trajectory adjustments that are happening en route between the pitcher's release point and the catch and the batter, which is a little less than 60 feet, right? Because the pitcher's arm is forward of the pitching rubber and it's the pitching rubber that's 60 feet, six inches from home plate.

So it's really, you're talking about 58 feet, something, however, wherever their arm is at the point of release. And then, of course, the batter only has a fraction of a second to decide. So a lot of the batter's decision has to be, I don't want to call it intuitive, but it has to be what their native understanding of gravity is going to be, or their understanding of the pitcher. Some combination of the two. Okay. So if you spin the ball with a backspin, so the top of the ball is spinning back towards you. Okay. We'll call that a backspin. Yeah. Because for every backspin,

there's a part of the ball that's moving forward. Okay. So you have to be, you have to specify what the top of the ball is doing. So if you throw the ball where the top of the ball has backspin, that will create a difference in air pressure between the bottom and the top of the ball. So, because the air moving across the top and the bottom has different speeds relative to the surface of the ball. So it speeds up, slows down, speeds up, slow down? It's rotating. Well, slow down. It's rotating.

Well, no, but it is rotating. But only one side of the ball will feel the same constant extra force. Okay? Either it's constant more force or constant less force. All right? So I'm part of the ball.

I'm going over the top. The top of the ball is spinning back towards the pitcher. Okay? And the air is moving in that same direction across the top of the ball. So the relative speed between the top surface of the ball and the air moving across it,

the difference between them is less than the bottom of the ball that's moving towards the batter. Okay? The bottom of the ball is moving towards the batter, and the air is coming back across. So in one case, you add the spin speed to the ball speed. In the other case, you subtract it. And that difference creates a pressure difference

between the top and the bottom. If you do that side to side, it'll move the ball left to right. Yeah. Pure and simple. We use these same techniques in soccer. When you kick underneath or to the side or slightly over the top. Correct. That spin, that sort of Magnus.

The Magnus effect, which, correct. That's what, it's been so named. And so, if you spin it backwards, the ball will not descend as fast as gravity would otherwise take it. It still descends, but just not as fast. Okay? So you're there saying, okay, it's a regular fastball. I know how much it's going to drop between the pitcher's arm and when it crosses. So I'm going to swing where I know it will be.

And that spin that the pitcher put on it kept the ball higher than it otherwise would, and generally you swing under the ball, or you'll pop it up. And so if you look at the arc of the ball side to side, you will see the ball sinks. It does sink, just not as much as the batter thinks it will.

Do you remember a conversation we had with Ron Darling, the former Mets pitcher? Yes. He was a TV commentator. And he was explaining to us how he would set certain hitters up for certain pitches later on in the game or later on in the season. Like he would throw some junk at them. So they thought that that was going to be the case.

And I think if you're going to throw this rising fastball, you have to set that hitter up earlier on in the game. Okay. So you can bring that deception and disguise. So you're messing with their expectations. Yeah, yeah. So throw a regular fastball that's kind of a crappy regular fastball so he doesn't want to swing at it, but he sees the arc and says,

yeah, okay, that's your fastball. I got this. Throw one over the middle and see what I'll do with your fastball. That's supposed to be the reason why you step out of the batter's box altogether when people think, why does it take so long for, you know— A baseball game to unfold, yes, a baseball game to unfold? You know, it's like I got here Tuesday and I miss work. I miss work. I, you know, I'm still here. But the reason why they step out of the batter's box is because a lot of hitting is perception.

is perception. And the idea is to clear your perception of the last pitch and hopefully any other pitches that you might have in mind. And you walk out of the batter's box and you're supposed to take your gaze away from the mound and all this. And now you're fresh.

This stuff actually has a purpose. It's not like superstition. It looks like these guys are being superstitious because a lot of times they'll add their own little, you know, routines and rituals to it. But Chuck,

growing up, long games lasted two hours and many games lasted an hour 40. And now short games last two hours and they all last three hours. So I think advertisers... I was going to say, you forgot about commercials.

No, step out of the box. We need more commercial time. Commercial time. So what you might do is mix up a rising fastball with a sinking fastball. Right? So now that you think you got my rising fastball

figured out, I now throw a fastball that's spinning the other direction and now the force on it pushes it down rather than up. And then you've seen this because the center field camera picks it up. The ball looks like it's coming straight at the batter and the bottom drops out of it.

And the catcher practically catches it on the ground. And the batter just swings over it and they've got it. So the point is, in a rising fastball, nothing rises. It simply doesn't fall as fast as your psychology and your understanding of gravity would otherwise have you believe. Ha-ha! Which in a way makes a curveball maybe a little easier

because it's not moving against gravity. It's just moving left to right or it's it's got some arc that maybe you started sort of follow the arc you know but with all the all good pitches are hard to hit so i don't want to jump in there and say i could do any better than the dude that just struck out well you know they some pitchers do the same thing though with an off speed pitch so it's you just, it's the same exact pitch. You just don't throw it as hard. You throw it at chuck speed, like, eh. Chuck speed, chuck speed, a chuck speed pitch.

It's called the chuck speed pitch. You know what I mean? First, you blaze them with a 91-mile-an-hour. Blaze them again. And then the second one, it's like, eh. And they're like, ugh. And they're like, oh, what the hell just happened? So, but you should know that the faster you spin it,

the bigger is the Magnus effect. Okay. So, because the difference in the relative speeds of the air moving across the ball surface becomes greater and greater. And so, some of the best pitchers, when they say, boy, they got a lot of movement on that ball, it's because of how quickly they actually spin the ball as it leases from their hand.

But isn't that when the hitter reads the stitching and they read the speed of rotation because they can tell from the stitching whether it's blurred, whether there's certain things coming, what kind of pitch and they've learned to read the stitching. Yeah, if you're good.

If you're in the majors, you're going to be decent, right? Who's the batter? Spider-Man, who is battered here? Who's counting the stitches? Oh my God, I only saw six stitches go by.

Whoa. So anyhow, I just wanted to sort of reinforce the value of a spinning ball, no matter whether it's a fastball or any other kind of pitch. If it's spinning, the pressure differences will move it in ways that give the pitcher amazing control and deceptive power over the batter. Lastly, how about the knuckleball? Ooh.

So the knuckleball does not spin, okay? Now, when you see that ball come in, you can see that, that it's not spinning, all right? You just see. Now, the problem there is if the ball is not spinning, it is not stabilized as it moves through the air. Yes. And the slightest...

I don't know what I'm going to do. Unstable. No, Chuck, not emotionally unstable. Jesus Christ. How many times can this happen? Chuck. You throw me. He throws me back.

I can't take it anymore. I just... Chuck, the ball, last I checked, experiences no emotions, right? Oh, okay. That kind of stability. So, yeah, rotational stability. Rotational stability. So as it moves towards you, it's not rotationally stable

against the air it's moving through. And so a slight breeze will just carry the ball to a different place. And so for a knuckleball, especially the catcher, they don't know where the ball is going to end up. And a knuckleball is useless on a day where there's no breeze, okay? Then it'll just go in a straight arc. Now it's a meatball. Yeah, if it's kind of breezy inside the stadium

and sometimes it hooks around, you can look at the flags, but that doesn't tell you because those are up above the level, all right, of the top of the stadium. So this circulating air can be the knuckleballer's best friend. And many knuckleballers are famous for throwing wild pitches or having passed balls because the batter doesn't know where the, I mean, the catcher doesn't know where to put the mitt as the ball moves around.

So that is the absence of a spin also creating movement because we don't have a spin-stabilized situation. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more things you thought you knew. T-K-Y-K. Did I get all the letters there? Maybe. T. T-K-Y-K. Did I get all the letters there? I did too. T-Y-K-Y-K. Things You Thought You Knew on StarTalk Sports Edition. We'll be right back. We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition.

Things you thought you knew, or maybe you do know and didn't know enough, or knew and you want to hear it again, or never knew, or never thought you knew or even cared. Okay. And now you know the real title. That's the full title. That's the full title, people.

The full title. That's the full title. So for this segment, I want to talk about lip outs in golf. And, you know, I see golf. I'm not a golf player. You know, I just always imagine the conversation between a golfer and a baseball player, right? And just how that would go by.

So the baseball player says, so you want complete silence when you hit the ball? I say, yeah, we need silence. And they say, well, how fast is the ball moving? Well, not at all. It's stationary. Well, where is it? Oh, it's right between my feet. And so you need silence?

Yeah, it takes concentration. Well, how about you? Oh, well, our ball is moving 90 miles an hour, thrown by someone who doesn't want me to hit it. While I'm being booed. While 50,000 people are screaming at you. So to me, that's a fascinating sort of exchange. I don't know, should we have more of those

or fewer of those? I don't know. But what we all know is that certain golf, sort of exchange that may, I don't know, should we have more of those or fewer of those? I don't know. But what we all know is that certain golf, typically a putt, but it can happen on any shot, the ball will hit the rim of the cup and then spiral around and pop out. Frustrating for the golfer because that's a lost shot right there. It's a stroke off. It's a stroke off. spiral around and pop out. Frustrating for the golfer,

because that's a lost shot right there. It's a stroke off. It's a stroke off. Say that right, yeah. That's a loss of a stroke. Yeah, thank you. We'll go with drop. Dropped shot, shall we?

Dropped shot, fine. So what's interesting about it is it can happen almost no matter how far away you are from the cup i've there's some they're good videos of compilations of lip outs where some guy was like a couple of feet away and he taps it in but it lips out and then everyone says oh and then he just goes around a little cocky said you're going in this time. Bop, lips out again. And so he lost two strokes when the ball was within two feet of the cup. I think they call that you suck. I'm pretty sure that's the golfing term. That's the official.

The official golfing term. I mean, if anyone's watched Caddyshack, the movie, they know it's a gopher in the hole that's pushing the ball. The gopher. I forgot about the gopher. The gopher is at fault for all of it. Yes. So here's what's going on.

You think you're hitting the ball straight, and you are. And so the ball has what we call linear momentum. So it's momentum in the direction it's headed. Yeah. However, if you do not hit the ball exactly towards the center of the cup, and it sees the rim of the cup, it's like you reaching out to like a maypole

as you're trying to run by it, grabbing it, and what happens to you? Ooh, you get to swing around. You swing around. So all of a sudden, your linear momentum, okay, what you think is purely linear momentum also manifests as angular momentum around the pole, okay? So that happens, you reach out and grab.

So when the ball sees the depression in the cup, that's effectively falling towards the middle of the cup. And so there's angular momentum there that is getting picked up as it goes around the center. And depending on how fast the ball is moving and how much on the lip it was, it'll either swivel and go in or swivel and pop out again. And so the only way to avoid this on every single shot

is hit it directly to the center of the cup. Does it also drop? That's all. To the center of the cup and it drops in. Does it matter on how much? Is there a critical mass of the ball that must be below the lip of the cup? Oh, very good point. So I'd have to do a calculation on this.

But I would say if you got half the mass of the ball below the lip that it's going in, and because it's very hard to all of a sudden have a force vector pointing upwards while this is happening. By the way, unless the ball is spinning, okay? Depending on which way the ball is spinning, if it's spinning, it can actually crawl out if that's the direction the spin is going. That happens in basketball where you see the ball ring around. Well, in basketball, lip outs are every third shot, right? I mean, when you think about it.

Yeah, it rings around and then it comes, it gets thrown out. It's actually in the hole. You know, it's in the center. Well, I haven't seen it. Find me one where it's half already in the cylinder. Oh, God, yeah. I don't think it... Oh, come on now.

Yes. I don't think more than half, but definitely it's in the cylinder. Up to half. Oh, yeah. Up to half, yeah. But it's touching the side and depending on the spin, the internal angular momentum the ball had by your shot, that'll affect what it's going to do as it kisses the rim.

Yes. And so some shooters will give a backspin when they hit the back of the rim, so then the spin takes it in with that much more vigor. But if you have different spins and you hit the rim in the wrong way, it's going to spin in a way you don't want, you're not going to make the shot.

So the same is true in golf. And in golf, you know, the spin on the on the ball matters right for so many of those shots particularly ones that are onto the green you don't want it to keep moving and rolling off the green so so many of them have backspin it's a bunker shots neil if you if you found yourself in a sand trap you've got to get right underneath the ball flatten the face of the club and then you impart the backspin on it so as it doesn't overrun on a fast screen and then we'll spin and drop and then that will be the rotation.

Exactly. And golfers are excellent navigators of subtleties and terrain so that if you're going to do a backspin, you're going to do it on a... On the high side. On the high side, so then it rolls back down. So you're going to think this through.

Well, you'll do it even if it goes low, right? You especially need it if it goes low because you don't want it to then roll off and go into the pond or into the brush. So all I'm saying is that the only way to avoid it is to send it straight in. So remind me again, why when it looks like it's going to go in, it rises up?

What is elevating that for it to lip out and not lip down? Okay, so what you're saying is it's already partly in the cup. So what's it doing? So it has so much momentum, right? The question is how is that momentum going to manifest, okay? And so as it comes, so let's say you're going to lip left to right and out. It goes in. So what's actually happening is it's almost like the bank of the track in NASCAR.

Oh. Okay. Think about that. So here I am in a car, and if I'm driving too fast on that bank, I can tell you now, if you drive 300 miles an hour into a bank, I don't think the rubber in the road is going to hold you to the bank. And it looks like you should just fall into the middle. You're just going to fall in.

No, you're going to fly right out, head in the other direction, on the other side of the track. Okay, so we're imparting that theory into a golf ball as to why it rises out of the car. Correct, correct. Because when you're in a car and you're on a bank, you feel this force sort of pushing you outward, right, depending on how fast you hit that bank.

And in fact, that's what helps keep you on the track, provided you don't take the turn too fast. So all we're saying here is that on that turn, if you have enough momentum, then that momentum will continue to carry, and the fact that the ball was a little bit in won't matter. Because it's seeing the— Because, by the way, it's not in the cup when that happens. It's on the part of the grass that bends in. It's on the lip, yeah. It's on the lip. And on that lip, it's not in the cup when that happens. It's on the part of the grass that bends in.

It's on the lip. It's on a lip. And on that lip, it's not a perfect 90 degrees, right? It's a small, tiny little bank. Tiny little bank. It's a tiny little bank between the grass and the turf and where the cup begins. And that's the bank where this thing flies out on. Now, if only we could get that ball to do what the car on the bank does,

which is fly out and then explode in a fiery ball of death, I would watch golf. I would watch golf. That would be amazing. Finally. We'll talk to the authorities on that one. Oh, dear. I can't see this taking off on the Golf Channel.

Can you? Oh, I certainly can. Exploding golf? Oh, my God, I'm watching that. We've all seen clips of practical jokes where the ball is something that explodes on it, not explodes dangerously, but just pulverizes on impact.

We've seen that, right? You make a golf ball out of chalk or something, but the person doesn't know it. You're the one who puts the ball on the ground waiting for them, and then they hit it, and then it's just a puff of smoke. I've seen that. That right there is eminently more entertaining than actual golf.

Do you get the whisper? That's all I'm going to say. That's all I'm going to say. That is more entertaining than actual golf. Could we get whisper commentary, though? Oh, that'd be so awesome. He's addressing the ball right now. It's a beautiful day here at Augusta.

The winds are out in the south, southwest. I see the ball is on the tee. As he approaches the ball, here's the backswing, and... Oh, my God! It exploded! What the hell just happened? Okay.

Okay, I'm sure Chuck's agent, the phone is ringing off the hook Okay. Okay. I'm sure Chuck's agent, the phone is ringing off the hook to get Chuck to comment. Come on. That is awesome. Exploding. So if any of our audience are listening or watching this, and they play golf and they lip out in the future, it's not because you suck.

It's just because of science. Science. Science. Right. And by the way, of course, the ball can bounce in and bounce off the bottom of the cup and bounce out. It's not lipping out. Yeah, but that's, whoa, now you just, I got to know now. Maybe you know or not.

Let's say the ball does pop in. Like it's bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. Bounces in the cup. And back out, yeah. It bounces back out. Is that still considered, it touched the bottom of the cup?

Yeah. Is that a shot made or do you have to then complete, put it back in the cup? Have you sunk that? Is that technically a sink? Whatever you call it.

That's in. Yeah. Because the cup is metal, isn't it? So there's every chance. It's tin. Yeah. Tin cup, as they say. So if it falls vertically, then there's a chance it can vertically pop. It could pop back out.

It could pop back out. Yeah. If it's a high enough arc on the bounce and it ends up falling directly into the cup, hitting the bottom and then popping back out. Right. Is that now a shot made? It just needs enough energy to bounce several, even bounce a couple of times to then pop back out.

We need officials. We need golf officials for our shot. I'm suspecting the ball has to still be in the bottom of the cup when you reach in there to continue. See, that is cold-blooded, man. No, just become a better golfer. That's all, Chuck. I put it in the cup.

How much better can I be? I mean, God. You know, that's kind of like if the ball has enough arc where it falls through the basketball hoop, which is highly unlikely, but then somehow bounces back up through the basketball, you still get the two points. Oh, so you're talking about it falls through the hoop, bounces off the ground, it goes back up through the hoop. Back up through the hoop.

You still get two points. As a matter of fact, they should give you six points. Do you imagine how high you would have to be to get the rebound to go back up through the hoop? That is, you would get the two points on that, Chuck. Two or three points. You'd get the two points, right. So that's what I'm saying.

No, no, I know. I know. The new rule, if it goes backwards through the hoop, it subtracts the points. That's just wrong. I don't know. Okay, so our crack team of behind-the-scenes researchers has confirmed that a ball that bounces out, that counts as a stroke. Okay.

So you don't get this. It's not over. You still got to play that ball. Correct. Correct. Oh, that's terrible. This is why I hate golf. Chuck.

Okay, we should rename this Reasons Why Chuck Hates Golf. Not enough explosions, number one. There you go. Starting with that. That's the Michael Bay reason. Not enough explosions. And not enough chase scenes, yeah. Right, no chase scenes. And if the ball bounces

in the hole, which is the whole point of the game, if I actually achieve the objective of the game, which is to put the ball in the hole, which is the whole point of the game. To put the ball in the hole. If I actually achieve the objective of the game, which is to put the ball in the hole, if the ball comes back out of the hole, then I have not completed my objective. So now here's another thing. If you want to spin on the ball to help you not get a lip out,

if you give a little sort of, I don't know if you can do this with a putter, but surely there's a way, you give it a slight sort of backspin. Very slight, okay? So that when it begins to lean into the cup, the backspin takes it down into the cup. Right on. But if you give it frontspin, which would normally happen if it's sort of rolling in a normal way. It has front spin as it goes in. But you can disrupt that a little by subtracting some of that front spin. So the ball is skidding for part of the way. You can do that, all right?

But if you give it front spin, then that sucker is just going to want to, you know, I've seen some lip outs where it's gone twice around the hole before it came out. So, yeah. Outbreaking. You got it. You got it. So that's lipping out on the golf course. Now, haven't we done other shows about the science of golf clubs and things?

I think we have. Yeah. We need to do a show called Golf Sucks. No, stop. Stop. So I think on those other shows, we muffled Chuck. No, we muzzled Chuck on those,

and we proceeded. All right, when we come back, let's talk about what role the bank in NASCAR or any racetrack plays in the success of high-speed turns on StarTalk Sports Edition. We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition.

I got Gary and Chuck with me, guys. All right. So we came off the last segment. We were talking about lipping out in golf and how the ball can just sort of go along the rim. And it's not the vertical rim. It's the boundary between the turf where it meets the rim. And that's not an exact vertical thing.

It's not a 90-degree angle, is it? It's not where the grass is there and the grass ends. And so it's kind of like a bank. You're basically banking the golf ball. And depending on the speed of the golf ball, it will bank its way out of the hole or fall into the hole, one or the other. Well, in any racetrack that's any kind of oval that is designed for high speeds, they're going to bank the turn.

And I don't know if you've ever been to a NASCAR race. I was in Daytona once, and I made sure to catch one. And they invited me down into the middle, and it was fun. And have you ever tried walking up the bank of that track? No. You can't. It's like, what? This is a hill with a slope

I have never walked up in my life. Okay? And so then you realize, oh my gosh. What angle is it? What? Okay, I don't remember the angle, but it's higher than your brain

is telling you it should be. Right? And so you're saying, what's going on here? So, we should ask the question, if there were no bank and you were a car going into the turn, you are relying entirely on the friction between your tires and the road.

Good luck. Tokyo drift, baby! Okay. Entirely. So are you going to slide out before you make this turn? Or not? This is what you, this is, okay. And you have to steer to make sure you stay on the track.

Always turn towards the skid, people. Remember that. Okay. So now, but if I put a bank on that turn, then the track is applying a force at you, inward towards you to the center of the arc of the circle, of the arc of the turn. Okay. Okay?

So there's a force pointing inward, and the steeper the track, the greater that force is as you drive along that track. Okay? Luke, I'm your turn signal. So you could calculate the exact angle of the track based on how fast your car is going and what we say is the radius of curvature, how tight is the turn, you could match those three quantities so that as you drive into the turn,

you don't have to steer at all. Neil, what speed am I doing for the track to be my magic? Well, it depends on the... You need the incline of the bank. You got to know that. It depends on what the track is and what the expected speeds are of the cars. The last time I ran this calculation, it was about 180 miles an hour, something like that,

for what I'm describing to take effect. Okay? So you're not going to do it in your Toyota Tercel. Yeah, because what happens in your Toyota, you don't have enough speed to sustain that, and so the car is going to, like to fall into the middle of the track. So you're going to slide down the bank as you're trying to go around. As you're trying to go around. How many racing drivers, Neil, do you think are going to say,

you know what, I've got it to the speed I need it to be at. I'm going to take my hands off the wheel and let the bank do the rest. Well, so none of them. But I can tell you this, that if you go higher than that speed, you run the risk of skidding off into the embankments. And you see every race that happens. And that is why we watch NASCAR. Okay.

Yes! Okay. So what I'm saying is the cars that mildly lose control, but not enough to be taken out of the race, and if they slide off, it's on the bank, and they slide up and hit the upper thing because they're trying to take the turn too fast. Yes, and that is true. That's when you see the car, and the car, like high sides.

Correct. The car is straight. It's totally straight as it's going around, but then you see it high side. The back comes around. Correct, correct. Okay. That's right, because it is overcoming the native force of the tilted track to turn the car.

So, yeah, that's right. So you lose the frictional connection between your car, just like the Toyota Tercel, that would just sort of slide down inward on the track. Right. So... Remember when we sat down with Mario Andretti, Formula One world champion?

One of my favorite interviews. I loved it. He came to my... I had Mario Andretti in my Hayden Planetarium office, people. I forgot about that. Yes, I did. What did he say about racing? I asked him because I'd heard this quote

and I wanted confirmed by him. He said, yes, I am responsible for that quote. The quote is, if you are in complete control of your car, you're not in the race. Wow. So when the NASCAR driver comes in at slightly higher speed, he is holding to the Mario Andretti principle.

Yes, yes, correct. And by the way, it's not a guarantee that you'll always fly off. You're just at higher risk of that, okay? Depends on what your airfoil is doing, your spoiler is doing, and what the design of your underbelly of the car is, what the air currents are because these all change forces operating on your car so the point is if you entered the turn at the speed the turn was banked for yeah okay then you do not have to steer the car and the

direction of the car will completely change with the track what this is, even if you are a little lower or a little higher than that speed, basically, any steering you're doing on the track is to maneuver among the cars, not to actually change the direction you're driving in. This is important because there's an old joke about Charlotte, okay? Charlotte, North Carolina, where all drivers only know how to turn left, okay? Because that's the headquarters for NASCAR. So it's a joke about this, but in fact, the track is doing your steering and not you. So it should be Charlotte, North Carolina, where no one knows how to turn at all. Exactly.

No, yeah, because again, you're only turning to maneuver your place among the other cars. Right, right. Which, by the way, is a better test of the driver as you're maneuvering, I think, right? You shouldn't have to worry about, let me change term because the track is turning. Now, of course, in the open wheel sports, the Formula One, those tend to be on flat tracks.

And so, yeah, they... Neil, they're not always flat. There's hills, there's banks, there's chicanes. Oh, sorry, yeah, sorry. But they're in roads. They're road normally, Neil, they're not always flat. There's hills, there's banks, there's chicanes. Oh, sorry, yeah, sorry. But they're in roads. They're road racing, right? I mean, there's so much of that. It's a track.

It's Monaco. Monte Carlo's a road race, but the rest of it is specific. They're tracks. And they have actual turns. They're actual turns, great. Where you're not going 200 miles an hour on the turn. You have to really slow down to make that turn. A couple other things before we break.

The undersides of the cars. I see what you did there, by the way, before we break. I'm just saying, I caught it. If you have fast-moving air, there is lower pressure than slow-moving air, okay? And that's the famous experiment you can do with a ribbon of paper. Have you ever done this experiment? You can do it at home. Just cut a ribbon of paper from a sheet of loose-leaf paper, 8 1⁄2 by 11, but make

it like two inches across, okay? And it's got to be long and droopy, so it can't be like a postcard or something. And let it droop in front of you and blow above it. And as you blow above it, the moving air has lower pressure than the stationary air below it, and the paper flutters up and ends up horizontal in front of your face. And so the airflow around the shapes of these cars affects that. Yes. And that also affects the effective weight of the car on the track, which gives you more friction, which

is what you want. So you're playing with the mass as opposed to the weight and you're creating suction? No, no. Now we got a whole nother explainer. No, the mass versus weight are two different things. But you must be creating a suction. Yes. You can create more weight on a car's tires without increasing its mass. That's what I was trying to say. Okay. Exactly.

It's basically putting your thumb on the scale. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Metaphorically speaking. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Okay. You know what I'm saying. That's a B-plus analogy. We can improve on that, Chuck. Yeah, you know. It's like, look,

if you're pressed down on a scale, you're heavier. But the truth is, you're not. Now, have you ever noticed, just a little teaser, you ever notice the spoilers that are on cars? They're flat on the top and curved on the bottom. Curved on the bottom. You ever notice that?

Yes. Okay. That's the opposite of what an airplane wing does. The airplane wing is curved on the top and flat on the bottom. Because an airplane wants you to go up as it moves through the air. Whereas the spoiler on the back wants the back of the car to press downward with more force

and increasing the effective weight of the car without increasing its mass. Very important for car racing. That's a whole other thing. All right. Nice. Stay tuned. Stay tuned.

We'll get there. So, thanks for... Is this our inaugural edition of StarTalk Sports? Things you thought you knew? Yeah, I think it's the first time we've shone the StarTalk light through the portal of sport

for things you thought you knew. So, yes. Yes, because that's a very successful format over on the other side of the house. Yeah. All right, we're good here, folks. So, Gary. Yes. Chuck, always good to have

you there. Pleasure, Neil. Thank you. Always a pleasure. My intrepid, trusty co-host. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, signing out for a StarTalk Sports Edition. Keep looking up.