Brian, I spoke to Dr. Zick about snapping a kinetic chain in the golf swing and he replied that it would not be advantageous to have anything big or bigger slow down or stop in the golf swing in order to make something smaller go faster. He said that it is necessary to create a negative torque on the handle of a bullwhip after you have applied a positive torque to it in order for the tail of the whip to crack or snap. He mentioned snapping a towel as another example. I may have misunderstood him but I'm pretty sure he described whipcracking and towel snapping as examples of a kinetic chain snap and strongly implied that good golfswings are not examples of kinetic chain snaps as you should never attempt to apply a negative torque on the handle of a golf club to snap the clubhead through impact because your arms and hands would not just need to slow down or stop to do so but would need to rapidly reverse their travel.
I'm a golf instructor with an English degree who realizes that most words have many meanings and many words are interpreted differently depending on one's culture, background, and experience. Are whipcracking and towelsnapping examples of snapping a kinetic chain? I understand in pictures and I picture hurting myself in the hands-wrists- forearms area should I attempt to apply a true whipcrack negative torque snap on a golf club that I just propelled toward the ball.
Another area I'm confused about is your example of some loose object on your dashboard picking up speed when your car slows or stops. I always thought that if a car going 60mph suddenly stopped, then that object on the dashboard would just keep going the same 60mph it was going before the car stopped. The object can't pick up speed unless something like another car collides head on with the 60mph car. If the other car is going 50 mph you'd really see that dashboard object pick up some speed! I believe this head on collision would be another example of a negative torque being applied to a positive torque. Is the head on collision causing the object to pick up speed an example of a kinetic chain snap or is the car just stopping and the object maintaining its speed the correct example? Are they both examples of kinetic chains? I don't know. Perhaps someone can help me because I'm getting quite confused about this whole kinetic chain thing.
I usually find out from more educated sources that I'm about half right or half wrong when I verbalize my latest theories about what happens or should happen concerning the physics of good golfswings so please take the following words with a grain of salt:
I generally believe that the legs are the engine of the golf swing and the arms, hands, and club are the muscular transmission system that forcibly harnesses and redirects the engine's energy into the ball. Basically the legs push into the ground for a fraction of a second with more weight pressure than the golfer actually weighs. The ground then pushes the same amount of energy back up through the feet and into the golfer. The golfer then - a fraction of a second after the push - sets or readies his on plane harness of geometrically advantaged arms, hands, and club to then muscularly unleash that groundforce into the ball. The body has just become a very brief but instantaneous conduit of energy from the ground up through the body and out of the upper extremities. Even the hands muscularly unhinge to redirect this energy into the ball. The hands unhinge at about the same time as the bent right arm unhinges but because they unhinge faster than the bent right arm they unleash their energy to propel the club before impact leaving the slower right arm to keep up the propulsion of the whole system through the ball. Of course the hands need to unhinge in an effective way for this to occur. Homer Kelley describes a very good way for the hands to unhinge. The torso complements the golfer's desire to unharness this energy to and through the ball by turning enough so the golfer can do it well. The torso in this way then adds energy to the inside of the upper left arm to help things along as well. The whole groundforce energy production, harnessing, delivering, and releasing is carried out by muscles. Once the swing is over, the whole batch of that initial groundforce energy has been seamlessy unleashed out of the extremities and the only muscular energy the golfer has left over is that which keeps him upright and at ease.
I know other forces - chiefly centripetal - are at work to make the swing divert into a circular or elliptical motion, but the causative force to move a clubhead to strike a golf ball well is muscular. I only hope I'm at least half right.
Brian, I really enjoy the opportunity to debate and hopefully not argue about the greatest game of them all. Keep being a pioneer and I'll remain a trustworthy ally and supporter. Thanks and go Gators and Tigers over the Bulldogs, and go Tigers and Gators on to the SEC championship game! What the hell, go any SEC team on to win the BCS championship so somebody can try to knock them off next year!
As to your
