Pressure

and involves the viscosity of the air and the boundary layer of air at the surface of the ball.

The roughness of
the ball's surface and
the laces on the ball
are important! With Index
a perfectly smooth
ball you would not Bernoulli
get enough Equation
interaction with the
air. Bernoulli
concepts

Reference
Watts and
Ferrer

There are some difficulties with this picture of the curving baseball. The Bernoulli equation
cannot really be used to predict the amount of curve of the ball; the flow of the air is
compressible, and you can't track the density changes to quantify the change in effective
pressure. The experimental work of Watts and Ferrer with baseballs in a wind tunnel
suggests another model which gives prominent attention to the spinning boundary layer of
air around the baseball. On the side of the ball where the boundary layer is moving in the
same direction as the free stream air speed, the boundary layer carries further around the ball
before it separates into turbulent flow. On the side where the boundary layer is opposed by
the free stream flow, it tends to separate prematurely. This gives a net deflection of the
airstream in one direction behind the ball, and therefore a Newton's 3rd law reaction force
on the ball in the opposite direction. This gives an effective force in the same direction
indicated above.

Similar issues arise in the treatment of a spinning cylinder in an airstream, which has been
shown to experience lift. This is the subject of the Kutta-Joukowski theorem. It is also
invoked in the discussion of airfoil lift.
 
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