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popsci_2013 01122.txt

#U s. Forest Service Solves Mystery Of Exploding Baseball Batsmaple is the unofficial wood of baseball. Thanks to good old Barry Bonds who used maple bats in his 2001 marathon home-run season players increasingly favor the lighter wood which according to one collector just has more pop than other bat materials like ash. Unfortunately maple bats have a tendency to explode sending sharp fragments of wood shooting in all directions injuring fans and players alike. More than half of all baseball bats sold to major-league teams last year were maple and the MLB wants to make sure every batter stepping up to the plate isn't wielding a ticking wooden time bomb so they've teamed up with U s. Forest Service scientists to figure out how to make maple bats safer. The scientists found that the more the cut of the wood strayed from the original grain the more likely the bat was to shatter The New york times reports. The baseball league altered regulations to require that the grain in the bat not deviate from the original grain of the wood by more than 3 percent as well as adding minimum densities and weight-to-length ratios. Black ink was added to the wood to make the grain easier to follow. It seems to be paying off. The rate of shattered bats has dropped for the past four years. Around 1200 bats shattered in players'hands last year compared to 2500 in 2008. The average multipiece failures per game i e. the number of bats that shatter into a million shrapnel pieces has gone down from 1. 0 in 2008 to 0. 47 to 2013. Now if they can only solve the problem of exploding bullpen phones when they are hit by these bats. why not just laminate the bat? kinda like a car window or bullet proof glass glazing? the wood would still break -but the laminate should make it stay together. No splinters flying through the air. Copyright-The Random Factor...called it. laminated maple baseball bats. damn..off to the patent office; I don't think laminated would do it. Seems to me many shards are likely coming from the inside core of the bat (judging by the picture. Laminating might cut down on shatters by adding some structural support but I don't know how much. Best thing to do? Test it and find out. What laminating materials could be used that would not significantly improve the desirable characteristics of an ordinary wood bat? well my thought would be that a laminate film would hold the external structure togther thus holding the core togther. Polyvinyl butyral is used in car windows Polyethene has many forms which could be used to create a light weight film that could be used as a lamination. Polyethene is used often in bullet resistant laminates. it is also transparent.:the bat might just look shiny due to a glossy effect of the resin. Polyurethane could also work. thats the stuff bedliners are made out of...although the bat might look plasticized after. too thick of a coating may have an affect on the bat. I believe laminating would work. I know of at least one Level III NIJ hard plate armour that uses bed liner (polyurethane) to prevent shrapnel and spall from the plate from injuring the wearer . but like phoenixamaranth said-i'd have to test it. i'm sure it would work its just finding the right material and thickness for the job b

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