Summer 2001
Features
Gardening Through Time
Lighthouse
Judith Tolnick and the URI Galleries
Happy 50th Anniversary
Taking stock In Students
Out of Harm's Way
Departments
Homecoming 2001
Profile in Giving
Class Acts Profiles
Back Page
Alumni Online
QUAD ANGLES Masthead
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 | Andy Gresh '97, co-host of the morning call in show on AM 790 (WSK0) Sportsradio the Score, interviews URI scientists Jimmie Oxley, at computer, and Dennis Hilliard. At far right, holding the microphone is Rick Stein, morning show producer.
|  | Cutaway view of a 1989 Major League baseball.
|  | Members of the URI Forensic Science Partnership with remnants of baseballs. From left, Margaret Ordonez, textiles professor; Michael Platek, electrical materials engineer; Linda Welters, chair of the Department of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design; Otto Gregory, chemical engineering professor; Dennis Hilliard, (holding baseball cover), co-director of the Forensic Science Partnership; Christopher Brown, chemistry professor; and students Scott Huffman and Kara Lukasiewicz.
|  | Dennis Hilliard, M.S. '80, co-director of the Forensic Science Partnership, pulls apart a ball for further testing.
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By Dave Lavallee '79, M.P.A. '87 Photos By URI News Bureau photos by Michael Salerno ver since the URI Forensic Science Partnership announced last fall that ingredients in big league baseballs manufactured from 1995 to 2000 could make them livelier than balls used in previous decades, the news has been featured in Popular Science, Business Week, Discover Magazine, WABC and WBCS radio, and even in Weekly Reader. In fact, a Kansas City Star columnist wrote that "the university in Kingston has some scientists who aren't afraid to take on major-league questions like juiced baseballs." In spring 2000, a local radio station wanted to determine if balls used in Major League Baseball from 1989, 1995, and 2000 were livelier than those from 1963 and 1970. During a live broadcast, forensic team members conducted some rudimentary bounce tests. Ball remnants were brought to URI labs for additional tests, which proved that more synthetics were used in the windings in the newer balls, cores in the newer balls contained more rubber, and the cores from the newer balls bounced an average of 20 inches higher than the three earlier balls. u Top | |
