Question

I am coding a simulation of a cricket player throwing a ball and I have come to the part where the player throws the ball. I don’t think my simulation of the ball is very accurate though and I am not quite sure why (no idea what to be looking for in physics). What I have so far is something similar to this, the arm has a rotation speed and the ball is released at a certain point. So I approached this using a vector from the arm to the ball, I figured the direction the ball should travel in the direction of the right normal. So this is what I have for the direction.

throwSpeedHorz = -1*sin(bowlerArmRotation * (3.14159/180)); // * rotationSpeed
throwSpeedVert = cos(bowlerArmRotation * (3.14159/180)); // * rotationSpeed

The problem I have is how do I use the speed of the arm with this to get the total speed for each. I have tried multiplying it by the speed of rotation which gave a way too high number for the speed.
If someone can point me in the right direction it will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Speed is usually given in rotations per second, so the speed of the tip of bowlers “arm” is given by

speed = rotationSpeed * 2 * PI * bowlerArmLength

(or more exactly the distance of the ball to the rotation axis). You can then extract horizontal and vertical components as described in your question.