Can a Person Throw a Ball 80 Yards in a Building with 12ft Ceilings?

[Wetdog33]

Hey guys

Im new to the forum, At work we are having a debate, I have attached the drawing to help explain the circumstance. The question is can a person throw a ball 80 yards in a building with 12ft tall ceilings with a 6ft high release point and have the ball hit the wall on the other end of the hallway without hitting the ceiling or floor, the ball must hit the wall on the fly. The only way i can see to answer the question is to see how fast you must throw the ball to make it happen. Then we could decide if a person could make the throw.


Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this debate has been going on for a few weeks now and has gotten no where.

Thanks

 

[berkeman]

Hey guys

Im new to the forum, At work we are having a debate, I have attached the drawing to help explain the circumstance. The question is can a person throw a ball 80 yards in a building with 12ft tall ceilings with a 6ft high release point and have the ball hit the wall on the other end of the hallway without hitting the ceiling or floor, the ball must hit the wall on the fly. The only way i can see to answer the question is to see how fast you must throw the ball to make it happen. Then we could decide if a person could make the throw.


Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this debate has been going on for a few weeks now and has gotten no where.

Thanks

To make this work, you need to include air resistance and the texture of the ball. It would probably be easier to just look at how baseballs travel in a pro game. What's the distance from 3rd base to 1st base? Good 3rd basemen's throws definitely don't arc up to 12 feet. The backspin on a baseball significantly decreases its drop during flight.

EDIT -- I guess for the 80 yards, you'd have to look more at a center fielder throwing home?

 

[Andy Resnick]

This is a decent kinematics problem for a test...

The easy way to solve it is to equate the time required for the ball to go up 6 feet (the maximal rise) and fall 12 feet to the time required to traverse 80 yards. I got a speed of 160 ft/s (about 50 m/s) is required: 110 mph.