During a game the same batter swings at a ball thrown by the pitcher and hits a line drive. Just before the ball is hit it is traveling at a speed of 20.0 m/s, and just after it is hit it is traveling in the opposite direction at a speed of 30.0 m/s. What is the total work done on the baseball by the force exerted by the bat?

The total work on the ball is 36.25 Joules

Explanation:

There is an important principle on classical mechanics that is the work-energy principle it states that the total work on an object is equal the change on its kinetic energy, mathematically expressed as:

(1)

With W net the total work, Kf the final kinetic energy and Ki the initial kinetic energy. We're going to use this principle to calculate the total work on the baseball by the force exerted by the bat.

Kinetic energy is the energy related with the movement of an object and every classical object with velocity has some kinetic energy, it is defined as:

With m the mass of the object and v its velocity, knowing this we can use on:

In our case vf is the velocity just after the hit and vi the velocity just before the hit. For an average baseball its mass is 145g that is 0.145 kg, then