Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. You read the title of
the video, didn't you... you know what's about to happen. Here's the deal though.
I've got to explain it to you. This is not some dude trying
to make an internet video. This is me trying to
answer a question that I've wanted to
know my entire life. What happens when a baseball
goes past the speed of sound? And there's very specific reasons
why I want to know this. This is a Smarter Every Day
baseball, by the way, more about that later. When I was a kid I did a
book report on this book: "Nolan Ryan Strikeout King." And I learned that in 1974, Nolan Ryan,
while playing for the Angels, threw the first recorded baseball
past a hundred miles per hour. After learning about that pitch, every time I stepped onto the field, I thought about the ballistics of
throwing a baseball through the air. When I went forward into school, I started learning about aerodynamics
and I realized there was math associated with all this stuff. And I started to learn
these equations and I fell in love
with the mechanics of how things fly through the air
and to the point where, as a part of my job, as a
developmental weapons tester, I developed a pretty intimate
relationship with air cannons. This is me in a
German air cannon. Anyway, here's the deal. If you were to draw a Venn
diagram of everything I love; aerodynamics, baseball,
air cannons... right in the center of all that --
Supersonic Baseball Cannon. So today's video had
to happen, for me. I have to know what happens
when a baseball goes past the speed of sound. Like, does the cover rip off
because of the shockwave? What exactly happens when
this thing goes Mach one? Let's go learn and get
Smarter Every Day. [Guitar theme music] In an earlier episode of
Smarter Every Day, we made a golf ball air cannon. We put a golf ball in there,
pressurized one side, and put tape over the end. We use the vacuum pump to
pull a vacuum inside of a barrel. When we release that pressure,
the golf ball will accelerate down the barrel,
rupture the tape, and exit at an
incredible velocity. What we want to do here is
basically the same thing. Only at a much larger scale. The baseball is 1.6 times
larger than the golf ball and three times as heavy. Mach One is 767
miles an hour. So in order to do this, we have to do some serious engineering. So I got some buddies to help me
out, and we started brainstorming. You'll remember David from
the vortex collision device, Jeremy Fielding from the mad batter, and Trent from the lawn tool videos. (David) If you got holes in there
it's got to go around corners. (Destin) Okay, so imagine
this... Imagine. So right now we've got pipe
and then we're pulling the plug out [FOOMP] and then all the air rushes
in the end there, right? Yeah. What if we have the pipe
all the way inside the tank, (David) This really is
just a cone to make sure... (Destin) Guide it in there... (David) ...to reengage the
barrel every time. And it also retains the seal. And we may be able
to get supersonic velocity with air just because
of the vacuum here. And because of the Venturi. (Jeremy) As soon as I start
modeling I'm going to have a bunch of questions. Because at that point
I'm putting screws there. I'm putting like, where ... How do you make it? (David) It's going to be long (Trent) Just get a
longer trailer, man... (Destin) Just get a
longer trailer... We need to talk about that So I've been successful in
uniting you both against me. So it sounds like we're ready to go [Everyone laughing] (David) Now that we've decided
how we're going to do it, We'll tell Destin
what we came up with. Okay. I want to show you
how this thing works because it's awesome. This is the solid works model. And we're going to cut
this thing in half and we're going to
zoom in right here and show you what it
looks like on the inside. The whole idea here is
we want that baseball to go stupid fast. So to do that, we needed
a whole lot of air on one side and not a lot
of air on the other. That difference in
pressure will make it go. This seal right here
is how we create that difference in pressure, We can pressurize the
tank on the left here, and then we pull a vacuum
on the barrel on the right when we're ready to fire. If we pull that rod back,
it'll break the seal, dumping all that air behind
the baseball and off she goes. Pressurizing this tank
is a little bit harder than it might seem
because you have several different places
air could leak out. We have a gasket
here, here, here, and a dynamic seal
on the rod back here. So when we pressurize that tank, it's going to try to push that
rod out the back of the tank, just like a syringe...
which sounds like a bad thing, but it's actually good,
because we're going to use that force to try to pop the cork
on the baseball even faster. To do this, we designed
this sear mechanism at the back of the tank. We push the rod
into place really hard. And then we compress
that front gasket, making a seal behind the baseball. We then click up this
little thing and it holds everything together. If we get all the alignment right, since it's one long rod that
keeps the gasket in the front sealed until the moment
we want to release it, we then pressurize
everything in the tank. And then we release that
sear and it'll dump all the air
into the baseball. So it goes stupid fast. The problem is now the rod
is free and it starts to move back very fast
and it's so heavy. It could break stuff. So to fix that, we have this
shock absorber in the back that we can tune with a
valve to try to slow down and stop the rod. Let's go forward and look
at some of the cool things we did to the vacuum
side on the barrel. With the golf ball cannon.
When we looked at the slow-mo, I observed that as the ball got
closer to the end of the barrel, it started to inflate the tape. Kind of like a balloon...
that told me that there was still air inside the barrel,
meaning we were losing some of the velocity
in the barrel due to drag. In an effort to get rid
of any extra air in this 20 foot long barrel. We had two extra vacuum
volumes on the front. We've got this big cylinder up front here. And then we have this big red
box beam underneath the barrel. The idea is, as the ball
goes down that 20 foot long barrel, if there's any extra air
in there, it has a place to go. I don't really know if
this part is going to work. I honestly just kind of made
it up, but it makes sense. You want to suck the ball
to the end of the barrel and you want to,
like, get rid of the air that's in the way. So you've got what I call
"extra vacuum ullage". Anyway, it doesn't matter.
BUILD MONTAGE. [Happy banjo music and machine noises] Since the dawn of blacksmithing
the relationship between welders and engineers
has been contentious Wouldn't you say? [Laughter] [Banjo music continues] (Destin) You laughing at us? (Welder)
We like to see Engineers work. We don't get to see that very often [Banjo music continues] Okay.
Moment of truth. We're going to
pressurize this thing. The question here is...
we've got that rod running all the way through. Does the pressure seal off
right here where that plug is? And also do our
seals back here work? What do you think? 300 PSI? Yeah that sounds like a good test. IT IS TIME The moment we've been waiting for. Oh my goodness.
Look at that. Oh dude. (Jeremy)
Oh it's moving now! (Destin) Oh dude.
What Hath We Wrought? Going Up! (Destin) Oh, dude... (Jeremy)
This is insane man... This, is insane. (Destin) Oh, golly guys. Okay, Here we go. Mark 1 Supersonic
Baseball Cannon. Take One. Baseball's loaded, Goggle up, guys.
Science is about to happen. Here we go. [hissing gasses filling tank] It appears to be holding all right,
so first shot 300 PSI. (Jeremy) It's definitely quiet.
I don't hear anything up here. (Destin) No leaking? You guys ready? Three, two, one. [SUPER LOUD BLAST] [excited redneck noises] [grown men losing the ability to communicate] OH MY GOSH. Oh my goodness. I think we need to
paint this thing and we need to get out in a
more scientific environment and probably get the
high-speed camera out and see what's going on. But this is NUTS. Okay. We have the thing built. We have all of the
baseballs ordered. That is a ton of baseballs. They're really cool.
By the way. They have a Smarter Every
Day logo on one side and the Rocket City Trash
Pandas on the other. More about that later. There's a way you can actually
get one of these baseballs. Anyway, now that we built it,
we have to control it. This is what we want to do. We want to make a controller
for the whole thing. We need gauges all in one
location so we can monitor the chamber pressure. We also need to know the vacuum
pressure in the barrel itself. We need to have all of this
information in one location so that when it comes time
to hit the big red button and send this baseball
at supersonic velocities, we'll have it all
right there in one spot. So we painted the cannon. We did some low pressure testing, which I'm sure the
neighbors blamed on Redstone Arsenal nearby. And I dubbed it "The Mark One Supersonic
Baseball Cannon." Today is the day we're
going to shoot the first baseball in a relatively
controlled environment. So the goal for today is
just to see if we can get above the speed of sound
in one shot with nitrogen. I doubt we can. This is Trent setting up the
Schlieren here. We've got this mirror and
we're just going to see if we can see the
shockwave go across and the shadow graph
of the baseball. We're shooting with nitrogen, the reason we're shooting
with nitrogen is the molecular weight is around 28. Jeremy's excited.
Are you excited? -Definitely excited.
-We are excited. We're gonna be shooting
with nitrogen because the speed of sound of
nitrogen is higher than the speed of
sound in air. Interestingly, I learned this. The speed of sound in humid air
is higher than dry air. Anyway, what I'm going to do is... because we're going
to be pressurizing that thing really high. We're going to be setting
this thing up as a place to get behind when we are
getting ready to shoot. I've got to focus
on what I'm doing. Can you spin this at a
45 the other way? Uh, orthogonal to the
gun coming down. If that thing blows up, we don't want Destin and
Jeremy soup back here. Alright, so let's
get ready for the shot. We are using a single
light-source for our schlieren setup. So, that's a fiber optic light. The fiber optic light goes
and bounces off the mirror, comes back. We're cutting the light
with that razor right there. It's hard to see because
I was in the way. Trent, do you mind
getting the matches? (Trent) Yep! I have it. But what happens is,
if you look here at our schlieren set up, Trent's gonna light the
matches right there. You should see a double. Yeah. Hold it up
just a little bit. There you go.
See the double match? That's because there's
a shadow going across the match and then coming back
through the match. So let's talk through
what we're about to see. There's some stuff going on here. So back when Nolan Ryan
used to pitch, they would measure the speed
of the pitch at the plate. Um, now they measure the speed
of the pitch at the hand. This is important because
I don't think what we're about to do is going
to be supersonic. This is day one,
we're ringing everything out. I'm going to come out here
and fiddle in the field for however many weeks it takes
to get the exact shot I'm looking for,
which is a shockwave over the baseball. So what I think is
going to happen is we've got the baseball
as it exits here. I think it's going
to exit supersonic just because of the speed
of sound in nitrogen. But the shockwave
is going to come out, and the baseball,
at some point, is going to outrun... It's going to be
transonic in this region. My hypothesis is that
the baseball will be subsonic when
it passes the mirror and we won't get the
supersonic shot today. It might be supersonic,
but we won't see it. So, this thing,
the math says we can be rated up to a thousand PSI. We're going to
go to 750 PSI. We've got a big thick, real
big thick shield over there. Let's go look at it real quick. So here you go two, one-inch
thick sheets of steel. That is a massive target. Let's get a baseball. [exhaling excitedly]
It's time. It is time. Okay. We're about to go
through the safety checklist, which is right here. Um, this is what the
control panel looks like. We tried to make it as
straightforward as possible. We're going to add gas here. We're gonna do the
first shot at 750 PSI, which is the highest
pressure we've ever pressurized this thing to. If you know anything
about pressure vessels, we're going to be behind
this steel. Right? (Jeremy) Absolutely! So uh....here we go.
Ready for loading procedures. - Ramrod.
- There we go. Is your heart beating fast?
It is. You're excited too. It doesn't feel right to
be this excited about a thing. [tape cutting] (Jeremy) Confirm all-
clear of the trailer. CLEAR. (Jeremy) Switch tank to vent ready. - Oh man. You're ready.
- I'm ready. Okay. (Jeremy) Okay. So the tank is capable
of holding pressure now. So we're pulling the
vacuum now, my heart's not beating
quite as fast. Is yours? (Jeremy) It's had a
chance to calm down. Okay. All right. [more heavy breathing] So an absolute vacuum
is negative 14.7 PSI. If we can get somewhere
below 13, we're good. About to pressurize here,
by adding gas. Alright.
Tank is pressurizing. Nobody get outside the
steel right now. That is a lot of volume. So we're gonna be holding
this for quite a while. This is tickling all of
the brain parts that need to be tickled. (Jeremy) Yes. (Destin) We got baseball.
We've got... we've got ideal gas law. We've got aerodynamics.
We have mechanics. We have mechanical design. I get to push a button
and loud things happen. (Jeremy) You get to push
a button underneath a red cover switch. [laughing] Alright, here we go. 180 PSI.
We're at minus 13.9 on the vacuum. There will be a
significant sonic boom. (Trent) I'm scared. I'm a little, I'm tingly We're at...
not quite 300 PSI. Dude, we have a really
good vacuum right now. 540 PSI [Urgently]
We're losing our vacuum. Hey, we're losing our vacuum.
Do you want to shoot? Here we go. Get ready?
Ready? Three, two, one [BARBARIC YAWP] [ECHOES BLASTING OFF TREES] (Destin)
WHAT ON EARTH. Where did it go? (Jeremy) That ball disintegrated! (Destin) No it didn't? (Jeremy) I think it hit the.... (Destin) It did hit the back. (Laughing) get the, get the (Jeremy) Hold on,
the tank is safe! Tank is safe. [grown men giggling] (Jeremy) It shredded it man! Oh wait, you can
see the seams! (Destin) Fantastic! Okay... So at some point
we're going to get that high-speed. (Destin) Oh man. Okay, cool.
Let's go do science. I don't think that one's going to
be super Sonic. (Destin narrating)
OK, here we go, moment of truth. I got to admit,
when I first saw this, it was genuinely hard
to believe my eyes. (Destin) Okay yeah so.. [screams of disbelief] (Jeremy) Oh man. Duuuuude. What have we... What have we done? Look at it.
It's beautiful. (Jeremy) Can we just walk
over and put a ruler in front of the mirror now?
(Destin) That's supersonic. (Jeremy) ...and then we'll know
how much that transient space is? (Destin) You can tell it's
supersonic by the angle. Like, it has a Mach cone! (Jeremy) There's another... (Destin) What is that?
Is it closing behind it? (Jeremy) You've got something
funky going on. Wow. (Destin) I have no idea
what we've done. We need to measure. We need
to figure out that velocity. So you have something we
can calibrate? (Trent) Yeah, absoloutely. (Destin) Point Zero One Four..... Now this is rough. Okay, that's it. Now... 1,050 miles an hour...
1,050 miles an hour. Where's my phone? Mach 1.38. Okay. (Laughs) I'm legitimately having
problems functioning correctly. It just seems too fast. Like this is just imagery and
math. That's all this is. We're going to make sure
that we actually did go supersonic because the shockwave was
detached from the nose of the baseballs on schlieren. So we've got a stob here
and a stob here. They're 12 foot apart. We've
got the camera right there. So as the baseball goes across, not
only can we get velocity this time, we've got a really good pixel calibration
and we'll be able to get the drag coefficient and the baseball. 530 PSI... about minus four
on the vacuum. Okay, here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. [It kind of sounds like what you'd imagine a dinosaur scream would sounds like... but also lasers] (Destin voiceover) Okay. The
indisputable two stick method. Velocity is equal to
distance divided by time. The time to the first stick
is 29 milliseconds. And remember, this
is happening fast. We're recording at 28,500
frames per second. The time to the second stick
is 36.8 milliseconds. Subtract those two and divide,
that gives us 1,538 feet per second, which is basically 1050 miles per hour. Adjust for altitude and temperature. And... Yeah. Hey, it's supersonic. That was Mach 1.35. I mean, that's just measured
straight up with poles. Okay... we have a supersonic
baseball cannon. It is verified. Ready? Three, two, one, fire. [explodey things] (Destin Narrating) We've all
heard the expression "knocking the cover off the ball", but the ability of a baseball
to be destroyed by literally ripping itself apart
with kinetic energy is something I never
thought I would see. That's how leather breaks. When it's
beyond his tensile strength. After several shots, we realized the cannon was extremely
consistent with its targeting. So I decided to put the
high speed camera in a little bit of danger in hopes of
seeing something amazing. We ordered a set of official
major league baseballs. So we could begin to understand
what would happen if an MLB fastball, traveling at
over a thousand miles an hour, were to hit something. Okay, you ready? Three, two, one fire. [Piercing blast, this time coming at you] (Destin) Trigger? (Jeremy) It didn't go over, but
it definitely moved the camera. (Destin Narrating) Even though
I thought I knew what this would look like up close, I was totally
blown away by what I saw. [slow explosion] Okay. So I've thought for a year
about how I'm going to say this. And I still don't know
if I have it right. So I'm just going to tell
you everything. And just, I trust that you're going to
understand. Here's the deal. A project like this is gigantic
and it's very difficult to get a sponsor to sign up for
something like this. There's just too much risk. Right? However, back in the day
I had a crazy idea and I was able to convince my wife. The crazy idea is: what if I
get a baseball with a Smarter Every Day logo on it.
And I mail it to everyone who supports on Patreon. Literally everyone who supports
Smarter Every Day on Patreon. And maybe over time, we can get enough support on
Patreon to offset something this large. And hopefully we don't have
to worry about schedules and.... you're smart... You know how the internet works. But there was a problem. I didn't have that many baseballs
and I didn't have a way of getting that many baseballs. Which is why I reached out to the
new minor league baseball team in town, the Rocket City
Trash Pandas, which I think we will agree is
the best minor league baseball team name in the history of
minor league baseball teams. And I said, Hey, Trash Pandas. Here's the deal, I would like
to do this crazy supersonic baseball cannon. Would you consider helping
me get baseballs? And they said, yes! Just tell people about
the Trash Pandas. You know, our first
season's coming up, we're really excited about it. Well, they didn't get to
play their first season. So the Trash Pandas
really need people to know about the Trash Pandas right now, they have great shirts
and stuff like that. I'm sure they would
love the support. They helped me
make these baseballs. And over several months,
like four months, I signed all these baseballs. You understand what
I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to break free of a
calendar slash schedule-based model for why and how
I can make videos. This is what I want to do. I want to make the most
amazing video at any given time that my mind
can come up with, free from obligation... and Patreon would help me do that. If you would please consider
signing up for Patreon at patreon.com/smartereveryday, that will enable me to be free... to do whatever
my mind wants to do. My goal with
Smarter Every Day is to change the world for good. Whether it be making a
student curious, uh, you know, making somebody
want to excel beyond what they think they can do, or just straight up
helping people in ways that they don't see coming. So that's what I like to
do with Smarter Every Day, I can promise you that any support
you give to Smarter Every Day will go to good in the world. All that being said, please consider subscribing
to Smarter Every Day on Patreon. I would greatly appreciate that.
And I will send you this baseball. If you are a Patron already, I need to know your address,
because I need to send you your baseball because I have it.
I signed it. I just don't have your
address in the system. So if you already support
Smarter Every Day on Patreon, please do that. Patreon.com/smartereveryday. Big thanks to the Trash Pandas
for helping me do this. They're really great people. I want to see them succeed.
They're an affiliate of the Angels also. Yeah, that's it. By the way, we now have
a supersonic baseball cannon on Smarter Every Day. We can do whatever we want now. I thank you for watching this video. I thank you for supporting this
goofy little channel that this guy in Alabama has, where he explores
math and science and tries to do things
that are intelligent, respectful, humble, and
fun. That's kinda my goal. Thank you for considering
your support on Patreon. Also. Thank you for
considering subscribing. I'm Destin. I'm grateful to you. You're getting
Smarter Every Day, have a good one. Bye.
Cool, now let's do light speed
That ball was tearing itself apart on air friction alone
Destin is awesome. The results of this thing makes me wonder what would happen if they could get it up to the rated 1000psi and -14psi... mach 2 maybe? Or would the ball just fall apart?
Such a great video. The amount of effort behind making this one youtube video is breathtaking.
Lol, he made towable sports artillery.
Now, upgrade! Do it with a football! I wanna see a Mach 1 touchdown pass.
Amazing - I wonder how a wooden MLB bat would take the hit, if it was mounted on the target backboard.
Here's the money shot
Not an engineer, so I was surprised that they could pull that much vacuum with just a piece of tape over the end of the barrel.
massive giggle factor - Ian McCollum
I wonder how far it shoots