Posted by: Joe (joe.flowers@nofreewill.com) on Mon Oct 11 09:11:14 2010

> But I know one thing for sure; The quickest way to get to two spots
> is in a striaght line.

I guess I should start driving through the center of town to get to the other side, rather than take the belt line?

It depends on how fast it takes to get from one spot to the other as a function of the path taken. If you can swing faster with a circular hand path than a straight line path, then the faster path can overcome the shorter path, and even if the hands get there at the same time, the circular hand path is going to produce faster bat head speed. Who cares about hand speed? We don't hit the ball with our hands.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Distance.html

"The shortest distance between two points is the length of a so-called geodesic between the points. In the case of the sphere, the geodesic is a segment of a great circle containing the two points."

i.e., it depends on the situation.

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