The Japanese Version Of Sport Science Is Awesome

We've said before in this space that ESPN's pseudoscientific Sport Science segments are "sneakily awful," but this weekend I happened across something from Japanese national broadcaster NHK that puts ESPN to shame.

The segment takes on the science of the knuckleball, and fortunately this version comes from NHK's English-language feed so everything is intelligible. (The mulleted co-host you see is "TV Personality Thane Camus," and beyond that we know nothing.) Technically this isn't a sports science program per se, but a sports-themed episode of the "Science Lens" segment—and given a CRT monitor is spotted at one point, it might be really old. But seriously, it features a knuckleball launcher! While I've always been told the knuckleball's lack of rotation subjects it more to air movements (a claim asserted in this Reuters video), we're shown in the video it's actually the seams of the baseball that disrupt air flow and create vacuums that direct the ball's erratic movement.

Maybe you knew that already. If so, then here's TV Personality Thane Camus doing...whatever it is he does. [NHK]