I apologize for the lack of activity.  I have the Washington State bar exam coming up in the next few weeks so I’ll be MIA until the end of February.  I will try to get another post up between now and then. I want to write a short entry on how I’ve studied for the bar, for those of you who have e-mailed me questions regarding bar study.

However, getting away from legal arena for a change, below is an interesting scientific explanation on how the human mind interprets and predicts where a baseball will land on the baseball field.

Catching fly balls in virtual reality: A critical test of the outfielder problem

How does a baseball outfielder know where to run to catch a fly ball? The “outfielder problem” remains unresolved, and its solution would provide a window into the visual control of action. It may seem obvious that human action is based on an internal model of the physical world, such that the fielder predicts the landing point based on a mental model of the ball’s trajectory (TP). However, two alternative theories, Optical Acceleration Cancellation (OAC) and Linear Optical Trajectory (LOT), propose that fielders are led to the right place at the right time by coupling their movements to visual information in a continuous “online” manner. All three theories predict successful catches and similar running paths. We provide a critical test by using virtual reality to perturb the vertical motion of the ball in mid-flight. The results confirm the predictions of OAC but are at odds with LOT and TP.