The project team is recording data from professional tennis and some of the top players in the world, focusing on how the tennis ball flies: its speed, how it spins, what happens when the ball hits the court, how it moves through the air, and the strokes of the players that generate this flight.

The project will showcase computational and experimental methods developed by NASA and other researchers, and make use of new generation high speed digital cameras that allow the team to see the flight of the tennis ball in new ways.

Our project is also designed to create opportunities for students and teachers from kindergarten through twelfth grade to follow the progress of an exciting research project, to interact with engineers and tennis researchers, and to pose questions, suggest experiments, and share results.

You'll be able to follow our research team in live video conferences over the Internet, "chat" with investigators, and propose experiments for our team to test. We've even set it up so you can conduct your own research! The activities and lesson plans are designed to show you the same principles the research team will study, but without the expensive equipment!

One of the great things about the Internet is that we can show you short video clips of the experiments. We'll also be creating animations that demonstrate the science principles to you in a kind of "virtual laboratory."

One of the best aspects of this project is that professionals in science and engineering are teaming with professionals in sports. Our message is that you don't have to chose to be either a scientist or an athlete. The two can work together in ways that are exciting and make a contribution to sports and education!

Once a month we'll be posting new information, activities, curriculum, and research results. So stay tuned!