SSL was featured in this Popular Mechanics article from April 2022 written by Tim Newcomb.
A professor at Washington State University’s (WSU) School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Smith had been working on a new concept for about a decade to track a ball’s lift or drag more accurately than with traditional wind-tunnel practices. His method yielded a fresh approach to propelling a ball forward, using light-gate technology to measure speed. Light-gate tech uses a curtain of light and sensors to track when an object passes specific points, allowing the device to track the speed of the object (or baseball in this case).
Coupling those tools with laser-mapping of a baseball, the WSU team came to a staggering conclusion: a .013-inch flattening of the red cotton seams on a Rawlings baseball reduced the ball’s drag, making a home run a higher probability. Smith and his team published their results earlier this year in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Sciences.
Tim Newcomb, “The Physics of How High—and How Far—Baseballs Can Travel”, April 2022, Popular Mechanics