At 11:25 AM 8/15/2006, Don M wrote:
Is there any proof or even evidence that a real world
golf swing models well in physics? I'm not baiting
you, I simply don't know. Well, I do have a belief
that physics models of the swing are woefully
inadequate to the point of being useless or worse, but
it's only a belief. I'm definitely up for having my
eyes opened.
What is your belief based on? I'm not baiting you, I'd simply like to know.
:-)
Seriously...
The golf swing MUST be capable of modeling with physics. I don't know
anybody personally who has ever said that golf clubs follow a
different set of laws from everything else in the universe. The only
issue is how complex the physical model needs to get before it
reflects the important things in a golf swing.
Around 1990, Ted Jorgensen did an extensive study that resulted in
his book, "The Physics of Golf". He was Professor Emeritus of Physics
at the U of Nebraska. (He died this year.) While the book covers a
number of very interesting topics, his major contribution was
creating a physical model of the swing that agreed with measurement
taken from a real golfer.
A good golfer was intrumented with reflective dots at the joints and
at important stations on the golf club, and his swing recorded with
strobe flash. Then Jorgensen started with the simplest physical model
(the double-pendulum described by Cochran & Stobbs -- probably known
well before that), and tried to match the model's behavior with that
of the measured golf swing. He had to add complexity to the model
quite a few times before he had a good match. But he DID get a match that:
* Mirrored pretty much all the recorded golf club behaviors
during the downswing.
* Accounted for observed changes in performance resulting from
changes in the parameters of the model (e.g.- addition of wrist
torque in various points of the swing, head movement during the swing, etc).
So I'm fairly confident that Jorgensen's model is quite capable of
reflecting the sort of gross behavior that backweighting would
affect. And Max's program is a mechanization of Jorgensen's model.
Cheers!
DaveT
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