Well, Eagle, you’d be surprised, but essentially your instinct is correct, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’ll relate one more story, and then return this thread to its rightful owners, who actually might want to learn something.
Twenty years ago about, I made a bet with the DL and he had to give me total consciousness. We were in Vegas and the bet involved a dancer named Candy and…well, never mind. Anyway, I received total consciousness and for the first few days it was great. I mean everything is right there in front of you, everything connected from a ladybug to Orion’s Belt, beautiful symmetry, full understanding, total peace and after about a week of this…total boredom. Plus people look at you funny because you’re walking around with a silly grin on your face, like the DL is known to do…one big cosmic joke.
So anyway, before I asked the DL to make me un-one with the universe, I wrote down some notes on a scrap of paper and sewed it into my jacket. Ten years ago I remembered and looked at the note. Its contents were composed of seemingly disparate thoughts, but now of course they make perfect sense.
Here were the note’s contents:
Search out something called advancedballstrikingdotcom
Collect as many carpet remnants as you can
Buy lots of lead tape
DON’T read Ben Hogan’s The Modern Fundamentals of Golf (all will be explained in due time)
Don’t listen to anyone who is on something called a top 100 instructors list
Start collecting blade golfing irons and persimmon woods
Invest heavily in a business called ebay
Eat more fish and greens
Learn how to make a good martini
Teebox…this sprial stuff is real neat. Don’t know, and my limited grey matter precludes undertanding the mathematics with complete authority, but the concept and the implications in an practical sense certainly extends beyond the veil which separates the 2nd and 3rd dimension.
Had another observation tonight much like the other day with the stupid ball washer. This time it came from the ball picker as I was driving the tractor. I was watching the rollers pick up the balls ( see the picture over in Rat Droppings ) and the black rollers reminded me of the black cylindrical brush for the ball washer.
Both the cylindrical roller and brush rotate on the same axis. For travel to occur about the brush axis the spiral cage and brush interlude and interaction are the same forces at play seen in a hurricane: circular.
However on the cylindrical roller, the travel lines for the balls that are picked up are perpendicular to the axis or rotation, so the ball travel is linear to the axis of rotation…and in essence the “true travel” of the ball is then restricted to and by a force less than what the entire axis of rotation can apply- because at that point vector, or directional, changes are non-existent.
As far as I know, a consistent spiral of lands and grooves in a pistol, rifle, and artillery piece contribute to accuracy and consistent distance. In conventional weapons the spin axis of the projectile is not manipulated in the barrel from shot to shot to intentionally vary flight characteristics. Yet good golfers, not always understanding classroom physics, can control lateral flight curve by manipulating ball spin axis and other factors. How do they do they do their art?
I am having trouble visualizing the range ball washer spiral.
To wash large volumes of range balls, it seems the range ball washer could be far different than the ball washer alongside many tee boxes.
(When I worked at a range briefly, our ball washer machine was a guy, his shovel, several large barrels of water and some bleach.)
It could be fun and handy to see photos or video of the innards of a range ball washer while it is off and while it is running. Maybe those images would kindle correlations between its spirals and a golf swing’s.
RR. Maybe this link to a pdf file is a start to show a little about one kind of range ball washer, but does it illustrate spiral elements that might be found in a golf swing? Hey, we’re still exploring, right?
Not familiar with Wittek stuff…we buy our brushes from Easy Picker, but they’re probably the same really. However our ball washer is real old and it’s real easy to see the inner workings…just like old motor compartments in cars: easy to see everything. One of my rug-rats has my digital camera. As soon as I can grab it from her possessive hands, I will take a picture of our ball washer from a few different angles. Who knows, the chickens may be around and can make a cameo appearance.
I would like to take a movie of it, but not sure if I can upload directly to ABS via a USB ( don’t remember if that’s what it’s called ) cord…or does it have to be sent to YT first. Still real fuzzy on the YT process, but been real busy and haven’t been able to tackle that effort. Hopefully soon.
Easy peasy, lemon sqeezy…just a feel actually- about how the rotating axis is situated in comparison to not only the expansion of the hurricane bands and how tightly the core pulls the outer bands inward, but the orientation of the rotating axis in relationship to the initial tangential path. Just one way to do it.
I’ll finish up with the pictures of the ball washer first…In the meantime, here’s a photo from the catalog to get things started:
Forgot to address this in the previous post…most certainly yes!
The counter clockwise rotation of the hurricane’s core creates the orbit pull if you will. The orbit pull is a necessary ingredient or else the outer bands ( arms ) of the storm lose strengh and fly away from the core.
The transition piece is fascinating too. Get to that a little later.
Got the digital pictures tonight. However rug-rat forgot to bring the USB cord along for the ride. Should be able to post some pictures of the range, including the ball washer, soon.
In the meantime…how about this for transition. The barber pole is a cylinder, just like the ball washer brush and ball picker roller, only the barber pole sits vertical to the ground…like the spine.
It then becomes a question of how well you can screw yourself into the legs, and ultimately the ground, from the top. This is the vertical drop…or dropping right down the axis of the spiral midline. Spirals can exist in vertical and horizontal planes of motion. Once screwed, which serves to delay acceleration until just the right time, it’s then time to turn the hurricane loose. Like this:
Will have to post pictures in successive fashion as I don’t know how, if the capability exists, to present them in a slide show format. This picture is the ball washer…built to last!
This is the inside- clearly showing a counter-clockwise spiral cage about a rotating axis which is oriented horizontally. The thing with the travel is the ball has to be true with the spiral until the exit point for the most efficient travel. Just like from the top and transition- it’s all a downhill spiral from there until the exit point, also called lowpoint.
Have some more “general” pictures of the range that I’ll put up in Rat Droppings over the next week or so. Should be fun.
Thanks RR. I think I see how this machine can be visualized to enable our mental software to fool around with “mental” CAD designs for hitting through a ball into the divot. However, it looks like motion beyond the divot to P4 needs a spiral that ascends or climbs. That takes some doing when there’s already a machine occupying the same space. Fortunately, experience demonstrates that our imagination frequently overrides inconvenient, intrusive details like, for instance, reality. We could get out the cutting torch and get to work on the ball washer and make necessary changes. Do you think the boss would notice?
Forget the torches…how about some crude art work instead!
As long as the brush ( core ) continues rotating the same way, one could construct an opposite spiral cage on top of the existing one which would send the ball not into the milk crate, but back to the beginning, or the top where it began. However, the farther away from the exit point ( green arrow ) the ball ( the club ) gets, the brush ( the pivot ) would have to increase its action past the exit point ( low point ) to continue to power the ball around the other sprial. Like this:
I had no courage or skill to attempt the drawing you accomplished. I had even less courage to attempt to put into words the underlying detail of the hitting protocol that we would try to force onto the innocent ball washing machine that, like the nautilus, has no ambitions to hit golf balls, as far as I know.
No matter how ill suited a given human being might be, compared to other humans, for hitting a golf ball into good flight, that ill suited human appeals so much more than mangling that ball washer to turn it into an imitation “Iron Byron” to get a ball to go where we want. However, unlike “hard to train humans”, we might not need to overhaul the ball washing mahine’s brain.
Hmmmm… In Iron Byron’s artificial “swing”, for starters:
When or where in the action is the pivot pressure reduced?
Does it let up before impact, after impact, after “P4”, where?
With the same amount of pivot pressure, what would happen to ball flight direction and distance if Iron Bryon was engineered to apply pivot pressure and “hand action” in the ABS manner?
Can Iron Byron be set up to hit draws and fades?
If so, how is it set up?
Can “Iron Byron” be set up to hit a ball from various slopes or hillsides with the ball “above” or “below” or “level” to its “feet”?
How then would it be set up to accomplish not only straight but also fade or draw shots in those conditions?
Does any part of Iron Byron’s action contain a Golden Rectangle or exhibit Phi? If not, what would happen if it could be engineered to do so?
I have only seen pictures of Iron Bryon. I would love to see it up close and personal to really take a good look at it…to see what is driving what, how parts interact with each other. But I think it is more 2 dimensional for club travel just from looking at the pictures.
The one thing about the artwork I did that struck me almost instantly is how the right the right side of the cage ( the portion with the red lines drawn on top ) looks like 1/2 of a human rib cage if you look past the red lines and see the steel cage as the background, with the red lines in the foreground.
I feel the spirals are different on each side of things though because on the target side of the ball we will eventually run out of pivot and the outer bands of the hurricane still have enough momentum to lag the core but not for long.
Sure would like to know about the rib cage and whether it is spiral in nature. Just curious about it.
I do not know enough about the rib cage, anatomy, musculature, connective tissues, and so on to usefully address your thoughts about the rib cage as a possible spiral structure.
You might find it interesting to explore the following website to get some initial feel about the complexity in this subject: http://www.anatomytrains.com/.
More specific to your spiral question, the next link in the same website, at the bottom of the web page, you will find an image suggesting an aspect of spiral linkage between the upper body and the lower body. The image may suggest that even if the rib cage may not be entirely a spiral, its several characteristics may contribute in one or more ways to spiral connectivity between the lower and upper body and movement. Also some portion of each rib may be shaped as a part of a spiral: http://www.anatomytrains.com/explore/tensegrity. I hope others here will provide insight for us about the rib cage as a possible spiral structure contributing to our golf swing and how it contributes to it.
Had another interesting observation today. Maybe nothing new, and doesn’t help one to shoot 65, but it concerned a puddle.
Stormed a lot last night and with high humidity this morning, there were several puddles of water still standing in the range parking lot which is blacktopped- one of those puddles right next to my “corporate office”.
I was sitting relaxing a spell when a customer walked out of the building with his basket of balls. For some reason I had my head down and was staring, I guess, at the puddle in front of me. His foot landed right smack dab in the middle of the puddle. I don’t think he was paying attention or else he would have sidestepped the puddle.
Anyway, when his foot hit the puddle my first thought was "geez…the poor guy just walked through the puddle. Now for the puddle:
It was rather small, with clear rain water. The base of the puddle was blacktop with just a little dirt sitting on top of the blacktop. It was like looking into a clear lake and being able to see the sandy bottom.
When his foot exited the puddle by being pulled upward guess what happened to the dirt? You got it…the dirt somehow rose to the surface and formed a spiral just like a hurricane. Don’t know how it happened as water is zero gravity. Maybe the pull upward of the shoe created a suction which pulled the dirt upward…but not sure what forces created the spiral.
So there I was…stepping into the puddle several times after the dirt settled back down and sure enough a spiral everytime. I have some ideas about why this happened and it relates to foot pressures and vacuum properties. Interesting to me anyway…a rat puddle.
Does this only happen to puddles in Michigan, or do puddles do the same in your neck of the woods.
Don’t know how it happened as water is zero gravity. Maybe the pull upward of the shoe created a suction which pulled the dirt upward…but not sure what forces created the spiral.