Year end musings

[mjstrong]

Originally Posted by mandrin

Ryan,

Very Intriguing. Are you simply guessing or is there an intuitive reasoning behind your refreshingly different opinion.

I'll take a stab at this instead. Due to the increased mass, the impact interval of the collision between the ball and clubface is increased, and the energy transferred is smaller.

I'm totally grasping at straws here...

[mandrin]

Originally Posted by mjstrong

Okay, I'll do by best "more scientific" approach. Momentum and collision formulae. Can I make some assumptions? I will.

First off, it bothers me that you listed the length of the club shaft in your examples, but I do not account for them in my guess. Oh well.

Looking at the second scenario: Taking into account the clubhead's mass, the clubhead's mass, and the ball's mass, and assuming a resultant ball speed of 240km/h (1.5 smash factor assumption), the clubhead's post-collision velocity should be about 109.8 km/h.

Now, here's where I don't believe myself. I'll assume that slowdown ratio (clubhead slowing down from 160 to 109.8, or 68.6%) applies to the heavier mass. So...you know what, I'm not going to continue because my resultant ball speed would be millions of kilometre's per hour. Probably barking up the wrong tree....

mjstrong,

I appreciate your serious efforts to come up with an answer. I will take from it that you feel that the ball departure velocity is increasing significantly when the very heavy mass is present behind the shaft.

[mandrin]

Originally Posted by mjstrong

I'll take a stab at this instead. Due to the increased mass, the impact interval of the collision between the ball and clubface is increased, and the energy transferred is smaller.

I'm totally grasping at straws here...

mjstrong,

You certainly are capable to look at a problem from various directions, sign of a versatile mind.

[jmessner]

My calculations show the ball speed from the "heavy hit" is 23% faster than the "light hit", independent of CoR. We're still assuming no mass to the shaft and no flexing of the shaft, I hope.

Jay

[birdie_man]

I think I know the answer but I have to admit it still seems pretty counter-intuitive!

Funny.....the power of these "seems-as-ifs" eh?

But keep the science coming...

And it becomes an unfair competition.

[jake2]

I'll take another stab at it:
~23% higher speed with the bigger mass.
Dropping the weight to 100kg would still do the same.

[ggsjpc]

this smells like the old which weighs more 100lbs of feather or 100 lbs of bricks. they are both traveling at the same 160km/h speed, granted it took much more force to get the heavy one moving that fast, so i'll go with a negligable difference.

[mjstrong]

Originally Posted by mandrin

mjstrong,

You certainly are capable to look at a problem from various directions, sign of a versatile mind.

Yeah, well, I still didn't solve the problem. Good thing they give me golf balls for free.

[mandrin]

Originally Posted by jmessner

We're still assuming no mass to the shaft and no flexing of the shaft, I hope.

Jay

Jay,

Yes. No change halfway, that would not be fair.

[mandrin]

Originally Posted by ggsjpc

this smells like the old which weighs more 100lbs of feather or 100 lbs of bricks. they are both traveling at the same 160km/h speed, granted it took much more force to get the heavy one moving that fast, so i'll go with a negligable difference.

ggsjpc,

Are you quite sure?

If I had you strung up about 50 ft in the air and you had the choice of either 100 lbs of feather or 100 lbs of brick to cushion the inevitable fall since I am going to let go, what would be your preference?