Physics Of Tennis

The sport of tennis has multiple opportunities in which the study of physics can go in depth. The sport’s court, racquet, ball, and even the player contain unlimited amounts of physics in which a person can go more into detail with as they study. While it is true that these all contain some form of physics, the racquet and how it interacts with the ball is where most of the physics is apparent. Starting with the racquet a person is able to see four main areas of focus. These focuses consist of the racquets sweet spot, vibration nodes, center of percussion, and the dead spot of the racquet. As a person goes farther into researching each individual subject, they learn that the sweet spot is located near the center of the strings (Brody, 1981).
However, the center of percussion is not at the exact spot in which the hand meets the racquet due to the hand adding an additional mass of about 500 grams, which in turn causes the location to shift to a position near the throat area of the racquet (Brody, 1981). Due to the force of the hand being at zero for the impact at the center of percussion, it is often considered to be the second sweet spot (Brody,
Using study it has been scientifically proven that a tennis ball will bounce to a height between fifty-three and fifty-eight inches when dropped from a height of one-hundred inches with no force added onto a level slab of concrete (Howard, 1987). However, knowing this information does nothing to predict how the ball will bounce as the game is played out. As a tennis ball bounces on the ground 45% of its energy is lost, while it only losses an estimated 30% of its energy when hit against the string of a racquet. This is because the strings are formed in a way to absorb the energy of the ball and then return the energy back as the ball pushes off (Howard,