The Tennis Serve Analysis

Jack Wilcox This picture was taken at the Gonzaga tennis courts. The picture depicts a tennis player in the motion of serving the ball. The purpose of the serve is to get the ball from the baseline, where the server stands, to the crosscourt service box. The goal of the server is to strike the ball in a way that makes it difficult for the opposing player to return it after one bounce in the opposite service box. The difficulty of the serve return can be increased through a combination of spin put on the ball and manipulation of ball velocity through various techniques. There are many physics concepts that can be utilized in the explanation of the process of serving the tennis ball. First, the server creates elastic potential energy in
The increase of the radius of the racquet from the body’s axis of rotation slightly lowers angular velocity because it raises the moment of inertia. This is due to conservation of angular momentum, which dictates that if the moment of inertia increases, the angular velocity must decrease (Cutnell et al., 2015). However, this decreasing effect is small in magnitude in comparison to the increase in linear velocity that is due to the increase in radius of the racquet from the body’s axis of rotation. The product of angular velocity and radius is the linear velocity. Thus, the increase in radius during the tennis serve maximizes the linear velocity of the racquet, even though the angular velocity decreases slightly. Overall, the effect of increasing the radius has a more significant increase in linear velocity than the decrease in angular
Through watching many tennis matches throughout my life I have developed an appreciation for the physics concepts that I learned through the research for this assignment. One of my favorite players is Roger Federer and through watching tape of him I have come to the conclusion that his tennis technique perfectly implements many aspects of physics. For example, Roger Federer is one of the world’s best tennis players and he utilizes the physics of the topspin serve to the fullest. Roger Federer generally aims his serve to the opposite corner of the opposing service box. The speed of his serve is 120 mph (54m/s). With a service speed this fast I wondered what the reaction time of the opposing player would have to be to return the serve. First, I determined the vector displacement of the tennis serve not taking into account his height. Assuming he stands at the halfway point of the length of the baseline his x-displacement would be 4.05 meters. Assuming the ball lands in the opposing service box corner the y-displacement would be 18 meters. Using Pythagorean theorem and solving for the hypotenuse the displacement was found to be 18.45 meters. Taking into account Roger Federer’s height including extended racket of 2.65 meters, the actual displacement of the ball would be 18.64 meters. Finally, using the equation Velocity= displacement/change in