Question

why does the cricketer lower his hands to take a catch

Answer 1

It is because of Newton's second law of motion which says that the force exerted by a body is directly proportional to the rate of change of momentum of the body.

Here the body is the ball. Before hitting the cricketer’s hand, the ball was travelling with a speed v and after hitting his hand, since the speed reduces to zero in very less time, therefore the rate of change of momentum that is the force is very large.

That is why the cricketer lowers his hand. In the process of doing this,he reduces the speed of the ball slowly to zero instead of immediately reducing it to zero.This gives him a few additional microseconds.

As a result of it, his hand is spared from being hurt very badly by the hard leather ball.

Force=m(v-u)/t

v->final speed

u->initial speed

Answer 2

When we try to oppose the motion of an object then we have to apply a force more than the force that the object already consists and in the direction opposite up the motion of he object. Here the cricket ball generally falls with a great force from a great height and the cricketer has stop the ball by applying the force against the motion of the ball . So as the ball is having a greater force , in order decrease the force ( to prevent the cricketer's hand from being affected by the great force of the ball ) the cricketer moves his hand to (which means moves his hand in the direction of the motion of the ball ) in order to catch the ball perfectly....