Knudson knees…no flinching…Canadian rams…you guys are showing me stuff I wouldn’t have noticed…enjoyed 1Tee’s comments also. 
Bom:
I haven’t heard the one about the fly and the train…please share.
Re: the fly stopping the train…
I remember watching one of these kids science programs when I was quite young and the story was that the guy was going to tell us how a fly can stop a train, needless to say I was all ears. Basically we was going on the premise that in order for something that’s traveling forwards to go backwards, it has to stop. So at least in theory, if the fly is flying right at the train and hits the front of it, in order for it to then travel with the train in the opposite direction, it has to stop. Therefore at that moment too, the train theoretically also has to stop. I remember being young enough to ‘believe that the man on the tv was telling the truth’, but thinking about the fact that it splats means that it goes sideways too and sort of ‘around the corner’ in a way to then go the opposite direction. But at least theoretically if you take it down to a molecular level I’m sure you could argue that things that small don’t splash or splat so they do sort of go forward, stop, then backwards.
Looking back I imagine it was sort of tongue in cheek, but because the train clearly doesn’t stop then it makes you at least wonder about the ‘rules’ in these things. It also makes you wonder if it slows it down on even a minute scale, maybe it does, but practically speaking it doesn’t. The train could be in the process of accelerating from say 40 to 70 mph and hit a whole load of different flies but it still accelerates without any real deviation in acceleration. This is where theory and practical reality don’t really overlap, a mistake often made in studying the golf swing imo.
This is a little abstract and sort of fanciful, but I often think about it in terms of impact and the relationship between the ball and club. The ball sort of splats on the face as it compresses so you could also argue that the spreading out on the face is it being consumed by the club’s journey which would allow for the club to maintain or still be accelerating as it makes contact and moves through, or you could also say that the ball stops the club. Have the scientists got any thoughts on the fly stopping the train idea? Mandrin? Clearly it’s not a physical reality so it would be cool to hear a scientific breakdown as to why it isn’t so. I know I’ve read often how it’s impossible for the club to accelerate through impact but it’s a fascinating discussion to me. Lag has talked about pre and post impact speeds and how maybe they could be measured by trackman, but what about right AT impact? If the ball is starting from zero mph, if my rudimentary physics knowledge is correct, wouldn’t the club also be momentarily at zero mph? At least in theory? Or is the splat/compression of the ball on the face the real key? So many thoughts and questions…
Pretty cool analysis Bom!
I’m always amazed @ pictures of distorted golfballs at impact. It doesn’t seem possible to be able to distort them so much.
It would be interesting to hear what the scientists on the forum have to say.
In any event…the next time a bug splats on my windshield while driving down the freeway…my wife will probably ask what my chuckle is for. I’ll have to tell her that long ago and far away, on a forum based upon similar principles, that poor little bug just got Bom’ed. 
RR
What you say about motion( the fly stopping, the ball at rest,etc) is reminiscent of Zeno’s paradox. Zeno, a philosopher in 450 B.C., asked how can an arrow be moving if at any one instant in time, it can only be ONE place?
The answer is solved through calculus. And I will not try to get into it. But what you say is exactly right…motion has been very diffucult to understand and describe for centuries. Apparently Aristotle himself struggled with it, saying motion is defined as “the fulfillment of what exists potentiallyinsofar as it exists potentially.” 
I have only a rudimentary and fading use of calculus. But here is a link to a DVD course that I watched when one of my kids was taking calculus. It is by a Professor Starbird at Universty of Texas and if someone can make complex things simple…he can do it( maybe we oughtta get him to help with the ballflght laws!) I can only borrow heavily from what he says.
teach12.com/ttcx/coursedescl … px?cid=177
He goes on to show how a person armed with a high tech camera might convince a police office he did not run a stop sign, when in fact the officer observed it. ( the officer, knowing calculus, was not fooled)
Calculus deals with only 2 concepts…the derivative( a measure of change) and the integral( adding up the pieces). The derivative of a velocity function happens to be the all important acceleration. The integral and derivative happen to be the inverse of one another ( opposing forces). sound familiar?
Starbird’s lectures include an interesting example and explanation of what is the fastest track for a marble to roll from an elevated point to a point below it, but some distance away horizontally …it was an eye-opener, but may help partially explain the advantage of the golfswing’s “free ride” taking a curved path, not a straight path on a plane from the DTL viewpoint ( he makes no golf reference in the example)
So people have struggled with the paradoxes of motion for a long time. And these were brilliant people. Trusting what we observe is a good idea. Trying to explain it can be fun, but also frustrating…and may be misleading.
Thanks a lot, Eagle… great thoughts- kind of mind blowing really… again, makes me wonder about the value of truth etc., and my own thoughts too to be honest… I’m gonna dig into some of that calculus a bit and see what’s going on…
I get very excited about stuff like this… the point you made about a curved path is something I’ve been thinking about a lot actually, and how the dropping or lowering of the plane increases acceleration. My favourite thinker of all time has some thoughts about it that I only recently came across that blew my mind… I’m gonna work on a post re: his thoughts on it…
Cheers,
BOM
BomGolf
If one takes a golf ball and let it drop on mother earth, taking care to choose an appropriate hard surface, it will travel towards the earth stop and happily bounce back almost to where it was dropped. Mother earth hardly noticed it all happening. The fly and train are having a similar interaction. Before the fly has even time to introduce himself to the train it has gone through a rather deadly inelastic collision process whereas the golf ball has recuperated and will go on living happily for some long time afterwards.
Bom, I posted 7 years ago - how time is passing by quickly - some information about [size=125]Golf impact physics[/size] which might be of interest. Also there being mentioning of acceleration I have included a link to another post of mine about the [size=125]Acceleration of clubhead[/size]. This is perhaps quiet interesting to some as it shows the vector presentation, hence both magnitude and orientation.
Mandrin,
Very interesting. I’m completely lost with the equations etc., but reading between the lines I like some of what I see. Fig 5 in the Acceleration of the clubhead paper really speaks to some of the stuff I’ve been working on- thanks a lot man…
Eagle,
When you were talking about the curved path it reminded me of a thing I came across recently by Richard Feynman- probably my favourite thinker of all time. He noticed something when observing a spinning plate about the relationship between the centre and the outside. After digging into it he found that when the plate wobbles, the wobble goes twice as fast as the centre. He liked it because somehow he found the ratio to be exactly 2:1. When I read it it struck me as having significance to the low late hit that comes from behind, and speaks to the apparently effortless power created by some players. Very interesting stuff indeed…
Btw this has to be the funniest/coolest quote I’ve heard for a while… cheers, man…
Feynman…I agree with what you say, he was quite a thinker. I watched those links you posted of him a while back. Now I’m wary of “uniforms.”
Curved path/free ride…I may be making more of the example than is really there, but it hit me hard :idea: when I saw it. I assumed the quickest way down was the straight line( “the shortest distance…”), but I failed to consider that the curved path allowed fo rmore acceleration. It made me realize, once again, how much I must be not seeing and understanding …stuff hiding in plain sight.
Here’s the link again:
teach12.com/teach12.aspx?ai=16281
This is a good resource to keep learning all kinds of things, they use award winning teachers, and teh courses go on sale at least once a year, so one can pick them up on the cheap. Alot of stuff I see goes through my “golf brain filter”…kinda liek this Small World Thread that you have started.
eagle
Nice point about the curve giving more time for acceleration… good stuff. I’ll check into that site and see what’s going on. I don’t know if you know it or not, but MIT have a bunch of free lectures on all sorts of different subjects available on their site, and they’re actual recorded lectures that kids are paying 1000’s of dollars to be in class for! Phenomenal resource. Yale also have a similar offer available but I haven’t spent as much time on their ones…they both have youtube channels too
Btw, I’m delighted to hear about your fear of uniforms- very healthy stuff… I’m glad you liked those vids- I wasn’t sure if they’d hit the mark…
Cheers…
uniforms…yep, had a relative get robbed by someone posing in a “student/yardman” uniform, complete with a rake in his hand, wanting to earn money for books. The guy was an actor too, as he raked the yard first, then came back to collect the booty. So I guess the lesson there is, maybe the best uniform is one that doesn’t look like a uniform.
I’ve tried to speak friendly to some of those guys in ABS uniforms…the ones with their caps turned to the 4:30 line( as Captain suggested)…but not received a nice response as of yet.
Thanks for the tip on MIT & Yale. And youtube, a great thing, …In an indirect way, that’s how I found Lag/ ABS.
eagle
Hey Eagle: How did you find ABS? Just curious if your route to ABS was similar to mine. Were you looking for something specific at Youtube but something else caught your attention. 
RR
[b]
Hey Bom:[/b] Thanks for the MIT idea. That should be fun!
Hi Mr Rat,
My maze went kinda like this:
1 born
2 lifelong golf cheese seeker,starting about age 5
3 discovered youtube December 2008
4 started looking up old golf swings…Hogan, Jones, Snead, Nelson, Moe,etc
5 found Sevam on youtube, bought his e-book, followed his forum
6 Lag lead a thread on the Sevam forum, and I liked where it looked like he was coming from, his concepts.
7 joined ABS
8 finding total conciousness/enlightenment…which is nice.
How about you?
Nice maze Eagle: Here’s mine.
- Nibbled cheese as a teen.
- Was addicted to cheese in college.
- Life, career, kids, demands.
- Got my first computer 2009- still learning and making mistakes!
- First thing I looked for in my searcher pertained to club lag.
- Found a bunch of sites, etc…and started reading.
- One of the sites was ISEEK in Australia.
- There was a poster named Lagpressure who had the most amazing observations and insights.
- Found ABS
- My last stop on golf’s major highway of life.
Thanks Eagle… RR
I had a similar journey myself…
I was trying to see if anyone on youtube had been discussing golfswing lag so I entered the word LAG in the search bar… that led me to an overhead view of Palmer where someone referenced ‘Lag’ the person, and I followed that to find ISG and his thread there… I got a lot out of ISG and would never knock it- I would knock TGM as a principle though… journeys are very interesting, they tend to have their own ideas- it helps to listen to them sometimes and see what they have to say… that might sound a bit hippyish but I reckon you have to walk around with your eyes open to the possibilities of what’s going on…
I thought these were cool photos showing the natural journey from the right side to the left side when the intent is to extend the right arm- similar to the golf swing. There’s no goal or urge to ‘get’ to the left side, he ‘arrives’ there through the desire to punch the air. Interesting to think about I think…
I think it’s safe to say Rory is experiencing some uninhibited childlike joy, and relief. No telling what that kid will do now. 1Tee makes a reference to that childlike state in a recent post of his, sort of as a pathway to enjoying the game and scoring better at the same time.
I like your description and photos of the weight shift. They are congruent with a description Mike Maves offers .
BOM:: I think those McIlroy pictures might start a lenghty thread discussion…
I saw a little of the tournament and couldn’t quite zero-in on the foot movement that was posted about a while ago. Did you see anything. I think those previous pictures in the forum showed his back foot moving oddly at the heel at the start down.
Also, I got to thinking…seems like a common, although certainly not universal, sign of golfing celebration is the “fist pump” to some degree. In hockey, it’s both arms raised generally. Was wondering if each major sport might have it’s own pattern of celebration to some degree and how it came about, and why. What do you think?
Anyway, the pictures bring up interesting topic…does the intent of punching set the rest of the body’s movement on auto-pilot? I think it does…but was the punch a deliberate intention of his or was it a second-level subconscious reaction to his first conscious thought of “hey, I just won some money”, or some other thought.
Last for now…what if he were to be asked to punch a specific point in the sky…would his movements or fluidity be any less than they are.
I think some of the answers to these questions may be key in unencumbered golf motion… the intention.
My rat brain is in a fizzle this morning…lots of questions. RR
I was thinking some similar thoughts about the fist pump action this morning…
I wonder if BOM has some pics of Tiger doing his upper cut/knife in your gut fist pump …maybe do a side by side display with Rory.
It may just be me, but Tiger’s fist pump action has always created a negative feeling for me. Not sure I can express it…but it’s kinda like his action say’s " here’s an upper cut/ knife in YOUR gut, I killed you" , whereas the fist pump to the sky like Rory is doing creates a positive feeling I feel I can share…I’m glad for him…he did his best…he beat the course, the elements, and yes, came out on top. It was a competition, but it was not mortal combat. Not so much that he beat SOMEBODY.
Ok…probably failed at related those feelings. And Tiger is such an big target now,easy to pile on. Rory has an unfair advantage for now…a much simpler life, unencumbered by Tiger’s baggage.
eagle,
Interesting observation (and I think there may be something to it). Rory’s fistpump looks more like a Freddie Couples version.
Golf is a slow and methodical game where emotions are held in check much of the time. I would think most fistpumps are subconscious actions and indeed may provide some sort of window to the soul.
robbo
youtube.com/watch?v=zv-I2wzGkdo
did not know where to post this but I thought you guys would find it interesting!