Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how
Speaker 1: do they create patterns in a baseball field? Groundskeepers at
Speaker 1: baseball parks have traditionally created checkerboard, diamond, and angle patterns
Speaker 1: in the field. These patterns have become more elaborate in
Speaker 1: recent years. Baseball fans might remember the star patterns created
Speaker 1: at Coors Field in Denver to commemorate the All Star Game.
Speaker 1: These designs are not all that complicated and could be
Speaker 1: easily duplicated in your own lawn. The designs are created
Speaker 1: through a process called lawn striping. To create lawn striping
Speaker 1: designs of your own, you only need two pieces of equipment,
Speaker 1: a lawn mower and a roller. Many professional groundskeepers use
Speaker 1: old fashioned real mowers to cut a stadium's grass. Attached
Speaker 1: just behind the blades of the mower is a lawn
Speaker 1: roller that bends the grass down. Some lawnmower manufacturers are
Speaker 1: beginning to make riding mowers with full with rollers mounted
Speaker 1: to the rear of the mower to make this task easier.
Speaker 1: Whatever pattern you make is revealed by the light shining
Speaker 1: off the bent grass. A checkerboard design is created by
Speaker 1: passing over the grass in side by side rows, first
Speaker 1: going north to south, then making east to west stripes
Speaker 1: in the grass that intersect the north to south stripes.
Speaker 1: In this way, you alternate the way the grass bends.
Speaker 1: When you look at your lawn, the stripes of grass
Speaker 1: leaning away from you look lighter. This lighter green is
Speaker 1: caused by the sunlight reflecting off the entire blade of grass.
Speaker 1: In the darker green stripes formed by the blades of
Speaker 1: grass leaning towards you, the sunlight is reflecting only off
Speaker 1: the tips of the blades. Different grasses can be used
Speaker 1: to accentually the striping effect, including rye grass, fescue, and
Speaker 1: blue grass. You won't see such a big contrast between
Speaker 1: the stripes colors if you have a warm season grass
Speaker 1: such as bermuda or zeisa. Watering the grass after mowing
Speaker 1: can make your patterns stand out even more. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, does that how
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