February 2002.
Author's Note: The other day, I was rolling with my
crew, doing some calculations. "Hey man," said one homey.
"You've got some moves. You should take your game to
the NBA!" So without any further adoo, here are some
calculations.
How accurately does a basketball player have to shoot to get
the ball in the hoop? Well, we can get the dimensions
of the court from
nba.com.
The basket is 18 inches in inner diameter.
I'm not sure what the diameter of a men's basketball is,
but the women's basketball is 28.5 inches in circumference,
which gives us 9.07 diameter.
The foul line is a distance of 15' from the backboard. So
we can calculate that to "swish" the ball, which means
that the ball doesn't touch the rim, the ball has to
be shot accurately to within how many degrees?
The center of the basketball can be dispaced by
(9-4.5)=4.5inches from the center. So the angle
ends up being about 1.43 degrees. If we multiply it by 2,
we get 2.86 degrees.
That's a pretty small angle!
How about a three-point shot? The three-point
shot is 19'9" which would give us an angle of 2.16 degrees.
Even harder!
Let's compare that with baseball.
According to the
baseball rules,
the ball has a diameter of 2.86 inches. The pitcher's mound is
60 feet, 6 inches away from home plate. Typically a pitcher
can pitch the ball to within 2 inches of where he wants it,
I think! So this would give us an angle of 0.15 degrees!
It seems like pitchers have to be a lot more accurate than basketball
players!