# Can a baseball be hit farther with a heavy bat or a light one?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-baseball-be-hit-farther-with-a-heavy-bat-or-a-light-one/44660>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [December 8, 2000, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-baseball-be-hit-farther-with-a-heavy-bat-or-a-light-one/44660 "2000-12-08T18:31:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![bigkahuna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f14d63/32.png) [@bigkahuna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bigkahuna)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2000, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-baseball-be-hit-farther-with-a-heavy-bat-or-a-light-one/44660/21 "2000-12-22T23:55:34Z")

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Several replys here have confused elasticity and what one might call stretchiness or flexibility.

An elastic interaction is one in which energy is conserved. E.g. a super ball that bounces to the same height it was dropped from.

Cork and loose strings may make a bat/tennis racket more flexible or stretch the strings for a longer duration but it does not make it more elastic. Indeed, the tighter the strings and the less cork the more elastic the interaction.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bigkahuna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f14d63/32.png) [@bigkahuna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bigkahuna)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2000, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-baseball-be-hit-farther-with-a-heavy-bat-or-a-light-one/44660/22 "2000-12-22T23:58:58Z")

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By the way, you physics types might enjoy the ant vision thread elsewhere on this bullitan board:

see SDMB: “how far can ants see”  
[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=44731](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=44731)

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