In golf, the launch angle range of a driver is typically 8 - 12 degrees. When you watch the trajectory of the longest hit golf balls, their launch angles appear to be less than 20 degrees. Similarly, while the arcs of the longest hit baseballs are higher than golf balls, their launch angles are also less than 45 degrees.
In physics, we learn that without air friction, a 45 degree launch angle would make an object fly the farthest. So is the answer air friction? If so, why does it differ for golf balls versus baseballs? Are there other factors as well?
I’m not a golfer, but I assume that the golf swing impacts the ball almost parallel to the ground. So, to get more loft, you need an angled head, which give you only 70% of the energy as a perpendicular one would.
The balls have various spins on them. Maybe the longest hits also have the most favourable spin aspect.
If there is some lift due to spin, then less than 45 degrees would seem to take most advantage of the lift over distance. Presence of air complicates things.
Just a guess.
I cannot speak for baseballs, but I do know that the dimpling on the golf balls, as hard as it seems to believe, gives them a practically frictionless flight.
I once saw a great demonstration at the Science Centre in Toronto as to how a golf ball flies. Basically, it’s the dimples in the ball. They set up just enough turbulence around the ball in order to create an air bubble around the ball, making the ball practically frictionless—it’s an air bubble going through air, meaning next to no friction. The dimpled ball stayed in flight longer than the non-dimpled ball, which, without an air bubble, was subject to friction.
ETA: There’s a great book out there, Why A Curveball Curves, that explains a lot of the science behind sports. Maybe the OP’s question is answered in there:
Now that they’re announcing launch angles for home runs, ISTM they’re always in the neighborhood of 20 degrees. Of course, maximum distance is not the object of hitting a baseball, just the distance and height enough to get it over the fence, more or less 400 feet away.
Now, launch angle matters more if you want to hit a ball over Fenway Park’s Big Green Monster. But the Monster is 37’ high, easily triple that of most other ballparks. Fenway Park’s right field fence is only 3’-5’ high, so you could hit the ball with virtually no loft and still get a home run.
You have to take air currents into account. If the wind is blowing out, you’d want a ball hit higher so that it could ride the air currents. Blowing in, you’d want less angle.
Typically a baseball player swings horizontally. It seems to me that the distance traveled will be proportional to
$$\sin^2\theta \cos\theta$$
which is maximized at about 19.5 degrees. Of course, this ignores things like air resistance and the fact that the baseball does not start at ground level.
This thread is giving me flashbacks to my first year as a physics undergrad.
One of our first assignments was to write a paper on the effects of dimples on golf balls. It seemed such a left field topic as we’d covered nothing close about golf balls or air resistance at that point. But it wasn’t so much about the physics, more a test of our research and writing abilities. (And our Head of dept was a Scot who played a lot of golf!)
All I can add is that years back I borrowed from the library a book titled The Physics of Golf. I’m a long time avid golfer, and interested - tho unschooled - in science. All I can say is it was INCREDIBLY complicated for my tiny lawyer’s brain. So much going on in a seemingly simple action.
It’s incredibly complicated to us physicists’ brains, too.
As physicist Horace Lamb once said, “When I die, I intend to ask God two questions: Why quantum mechanics? And why turbulence? On the former, I am reasonably confident of getting an answer.”
American footballs, on the other hand, are closer to 45 degrees, but not quite.
Anecdote: Angle of attack counts if you’re looking for maximum height, as well. The highest I’ve seen anything kicked, even on TV, was at one of my brother’s middle school soccer games, where a player from one team kicked the ball right into the foot of an opposing player who had gone for the same ball and was a tiny bit late, but who still followed through on the kick. This somehow enabled the ball to go directly upward without any contortions or awkward stretching. It sailed upward approximately as long as you’d see on a long kick in american football or soccer, but then kept going upward. I wasn’t used to seeing something go so high upward, so it really looked like an optical illusion of the ball being pulled upward by an invisible wire in the sky.