How far could a golf ball be propelled at STP?

I have a better solution for you. The problem is, you can /intend/ your swing to deliver either maximum power, or best accuracy. But not both. How many times have you wound up, then clubbed the ground 8" behind the ball with a wild swing? Plenty embarrassing, yeah. So you make sure to actually hit the ball on your next attempt, and you're a little timid. What's needed isn't more power, but a way to accurately apply all of the power that you're capable of unleashing.

We're going to use an inertial guidance system. Place the club head right up against the ball, right where you want it to make contact. Now, push a button, wait for the LED indicator to glow steady, and your club is initialized. That's it. No explosives, no drama, just wail on the ball with all you've got and the system commands the club head to return to *exactly* the position where it was initialized. Sweet.

Then why don't you specify exactly where you see that? Nothing I described clashes with any electronics. I haven't described how the club head would be steered, but that's irrelevant at this point.

I only skimmed the thread, so I don't know if it's been mentioned yet.

If I'm remembering correctly, when you look at a high-speed video of a golf ball being hit, the ball deforms considerably. Then it rebounds off of the club.

Less representative of a real driver hit, but food for your thought: There has to be some elastic limit reached where it either transmutes itself into Golf Confetti, or it attains the approximate mechanical compliance of a rock. In either case, the efficiency of the stroke is going to be lost.

Gummer: ...

Then you shouldn't have any trouble specifying which part of "such" is impossible with today's electronics technology. What are you waiting for? I asked, you could have done it already.

Not so, or not always so, it all depends on the mass of the ball the mass of the head, and the force delivered by the charge.

As for "hurt your arm" no more so than a club can do already. People already have crappy follow through a lot of the time. Sure would make the game more "interesting" with people out on the course adjusting powder charges, cleaning their clubs of the fouling etc.

Just as (un) likely to "hurt" your arm.

jk

And I have a better one for you, Lets just go to blunderbuss golf, You cram it down the barrel after you add your black powder charge, aim and fire.

Where ever it lands, you pick it up, and repeat.

Going to make putting REAL interesting.

[Of course you probably think you need to place the charge on the back of the stock.] jk

...

Are you going to swing your apparatus, or just hold it down?

(...)

Just point down. A 'hole in one' every time.

--Winston

Years ago I read an article written by someone who did exactly that as a part of some research into golf balls, except that he used a cannon sort of device. He discovered that the balls flew a shorter distance then when hit by a golf club as the cannon didn't induce spin to the balls and lift generated by the spinning ball contributes significantly to the distance the ball flies.

-- John B.

That's reasonable if they impart roughly the same amount energy to the ball, because the spin that a ball acquires when hit by a club creates a sizeable amount of lift from the Magnus effect. I'm more familiar with that from curving baseballs, but I remember some mention of the effect with golf balls back when I coached young pitchers and read some of the research..

But I'll bet that you can fire a golf ball vastly farther with a cannon, because you aren't limited by the energy driving a ball from the rebound off of a club face.

As I mentioned, the article was about some research on golf balls. As I remember it the launch device was calibrated for some standard muzzle velocity that approximated that of a human golfer hitting a drive.

-- John B.

You could certainly have a greater initial velocity. But the relatively light weight and the high drag might prevent it from going vastly farther.

Dan

That's what I guessed. And it's a good point.

Yeah, the ballistics are lousy, but it must be a few times, at least, the 500 or 600-yard potential of a golf ball hit with a club.

You can for sure. So long as the golfball doesn't come apart.

Can we make a cannon that gets the ball spinning properly? I'm thinking a groove in one side of the bore, so gas blow-by is not symmetric.

For the record, my Father was a golfer, and one day asked me to measure the speed of the ball off the Tee. Using crude equipment (a storage scope, a microphone, a blanket hanging on a clothesline, and some geometry), the answer was 107 mph.

Joe Gwinn

al velocity would need to be

First off I pretty much agree with what you said about dimples reducing pressure drag. They make the relative airflow more turbulent and it sticks to the surface more going farther around the ball reducing its wake.

Drag is the only aerodynamic force a spinning ball moveing through the air has going for it. Drag is a formidable force that can make things move in any direction or in some particular circumstances oppose motion. Drag is pretty busy on a spinning golf ball it opposes not only its motion through the air it also opposes it motion while in the air (rotation). When you pull a paddle through the water the drag opposing its motion through the water is what the boat uses for thrust. When a bird brings its wing down it creates drag and thrust in the upward direction. Even when drag opposes one motion it can cause another and that is the case with the Magnus effect.

The Magnus effect is caused by uneven friction drag around the spinning ball. The uneven friction drag is caused by the spinning ball being pushed into the oncoming air not unlike a spinning car tire being pushed into the ground, both tend to turn a circular force into a more linear force. Because the Magnus effect is caused by friction drag, surface preparations that cause more friction drag on the balls surface cause more Magnus effect. The more the ball spins while going through the air the more Magnus effect yet when determining the aerodynamic force that causes the Magnus effect the very large fact that the ball is spinning is totally ignored by the people that write text. Its pretty obvious that they are determining the lift from the relative airflow caused by the balls motion through the air (flight path) when it fact it is caused by its motion through the air as well as it motion while in the air (rotation). Calling the Magnus effect lift is based on the false premise that the ball is not spinning, and totally ignores the large influence rotation has on the relative airflow that is influencing the ball. Not very scientific but it shows the amount of skew of actual occurrence that is acceptable when writing formula.

Neither, Aim and fire. jk

Real interesting putting. You'll have to fire up, of course, so the ball can drop into the hole. You should use an inertial guidance system. The spinning ball can be steered with a gyroscope.

Nobody has said what STP means. I'll guess Standard Tenperature and Pressure.

And someday I'll laugh at the excessive size of that thing.

Confirmed stupid. You copy data *once* to a cheap hard drive, and think that you have your junk backed up for posterity. You claim that I don't know anything about electronics when I tell you that those itty-bitty magnetic blips fade away, especially as they become ittier and bittier on huge single platter disks and they're not repeatedly rewritten.