system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If I hit a baseball with a bat, can the ball go faster than the speed that I'm swinging the bat?

I'm thinking of a ball that is stationary, like on a tee. I guess that maybe the question would work better for a golf ball now that I'm thinking about it. 

If it is a pitched ball, can the ball ever go faster than the combined speed of the bat and the ball? Does it matter what the ball is made of, or how strong the person swinging the bat is?
gpt
Yes, the ball can.  Assuming an elastic collision, both kinetic energy and momentum of the system must be conserved.  Focusing on the small period of time surrounding the hit of the ball, obeying these two conservation laws means that the ball can shoot off with a much higher velocity than the bat, because the bat has a much larger mass (and benefits from the mass of the person holding the bat).

The material matters because this determines how elastic vs. inelastic the collision (between the bat and the ball) is.  More rigid materials will lead to more elastic collisions (meaning less energy is lost to heat) and hence more energy stays as kinetic energy and the ball shoots off faster.  Squishier materials lead to more inelastic collisions (meaning more energy is absorbed into deformation of the materials and generating heat) and so the ball will not bounce off as fast.