mandrin
New
Brian showed a refreshing willingness to change his mind and I thought it to be useful to put in one post all the necessary information for anyone who wants to make up his own mind with regard to matters dealing with the [size=+1] physics of impact [/size].
Colliding objects, during impact, do generate very large forces over a very short period of time and therefore the influence of any external force, such as gravity, muscular exertions, etc., on impact duration, on motions/velocities/accelerations, during the impact interval, can be safely ignored.
Scientific experiments have shown this to be true for various sports such as, for instance, tennis, golf and baseball. The various mental constructs regarding impact are usually implying that we can do something about impact but actually are dealing only with optimizing pre-impact conditions due to the intrinsic impact physics and human reaction time.
One basic problem is indeed that of the very different time scales involved. Human reaction time is about 0.2 seconds. Impact duration is about 0.0004 seconds. It is simply beyond our sensory perception limits even if we might feel very strongly that we are controlling conditions during impact.
It is perhaps useful to compare impact with an explosion. The downswing is than simply a gathering of energy to be dispensed with in a flash during the explosive encounter of clubhead with ball during impact. All we can do is optimize the parameters before the explosive encounter but not during the explosion itself.
mandrin
Colliding objects, during impact, do generate very large forces over a very short period of time and therefore the influence of any external force, such as gravity, muscular exertions, etc., on impact duration, on motions/velocities/accelerations, during the impact interval, can be safely ignored.
Scientific experiments have shown this to be true for various sports such as, for instance, tennis, golf and baseball. The various mental constructs regarding impact are usually implying that we can do something about impact but actually are dealing only with optimizing pre-impact conditions due to the intrinsic impact physics and human reaction time.
One basic problem is indeed that of the very different time scales involved. Human reaction time is about 0.2 seconds. Impact duration is about 0.0004 seconds. It is simply beyond our sensory perception limits even if we might feel very strongly that we are controlling conditions during impact.
It is perhaps useful to compare impact with an explosion. The downswing is than simply a gathering of energy to be dispensed with in a flash during the explosive encounter of clubhead with ball during impact. All we can do is optimize the parameters before the explosive encounter but not during the explosion itself.
mandrin
