I have a "silly" science/physics question.

Something I have wondered for a while. (yes, I have way too much time on my hands to think about useless things. LOL)

Here is the setup:

A flat bed pickup truck is driving down a straight road going 45 mph. On the bed of this truck, there is a baseball pitching machine facing the rear bumper of the truck and its speed is set at 45 mph.

Here is the question:

When a ball is put into this machine and thrown, what would the ball appear to do to a bystander, or a camera, at the point in which it is ejected from the machine?

Would it hover in the air and drop to the ground in the same spot it was launched? Would it hover in the air for a moment and then begin to drift one direction or the other as the forces of air caught it and slowed its speed? If so, which direction would it drift?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

While I appreciate the response, I meant the question was silly. It's actually an honest/serious question. :)

I think the ball would take off like it does when the machine is stationary...with some disruption of it's flight due to wind shear....bet you can get a few High School baseball players to try it out on a Friday night...LOL

I think the pitching machine's 45 mph setting is set so that it is around that speed after traveling 60 feet 6 inches. So, initially, the ball would be traveling faster than the truck, and then decelerate to the 45 mph speed, which wouldn't be maintained for all that long.

...but for the purposes of this question, let's assume that the ball leaves the machine at 45 mph. :)

There was a Japanese video of this somewhere on the web a few years ago, but I don't have the link. Their experiment was launching a ball backwards at 100 km/h from the bed of a truck going the opposite way at the same speed.

Edit to add link: http://www.popsci.com/breakdown/article/2008-06/international-experiments-relative-motion?page=6

The baseball will emerge from the pitching machine with zero velocity (aka still) but the force of gravity will act on it instantly and cause it to accelerate toward the ground (center of the Earth). At first it will move slowly until the acceleration of gravity builds up the velocity.

A much more interesting question to ask would be, what if the pitching machine shot out light (aka it was a flashlight).

:D

A bit anticlimactic, but all things considered, it makes sense if you think about it. LOL

He knows more about that stuff than I do, so I presume he's right.

But I'll bet the guy driving in back of the truck would be pissed...especially if he's tailgating. :D

Perhaps we should consider the possibility that the resulting motion of air could affect the ball's motion. The precise effect (if there is an effect) would seem to depend upon details not specified in your question.

ie it would be higher right after ejection from the tube, then slow down due to wind resistance whereas the truck would have velocity but no acceleration.

So no idea. But I'm glad to complicate matters.

If there is ever a community where one can get a question answered honestly and accurately, it is here. That's the main reason I love this place. Well, that and the fact that our political opinions are correct somewhere between 92% - 99% of the time. ;) (yeah, I just pulled those numbers out of my ass, so to speak, but I think they're probably correct...we Democrats are actually wrong every once in a while, but not that often. LOL)