E = Mc² - relevance to golf

[ManinBlack]

Anyone who knows me is aware that I am an inveterate tinkerer. I have a training club which is seriously heavy, with lead shot in the shaft. It's a driver & I struggle to hit it 150 yards. This proves that if the club is too heavy it won't work. But what about the ideal weight? I made my M1 an inch longer than standard. Using the handy swingweight estimator http://www.leaderboard.com/SWINGWEIGHT it swings at D9, a bit on the heavy side.

If it was lighter I could swing it faster. Would the extra speed more than compensate for the lower mass moving behind the ball? Would the increase in c² outweigh the reduction in M? I don't know but I'm off soon to the range where I'm going to remove the lightest weight & see what happens.

Does anyone else have experience of this? I'd like to hear.

 

[Hobbit]

Short version; force = mass X acceleration. If you make it lighter but swing it faster it could go the same distance but by swinging faster you may lose timing... there will be an optimal mass and acceleration but it will be different for everyone.

 

[r0wly86]

Anyone who knows me is aware that I am an inveterate tinkerer. I have a training club which is seriously heavy, with lead shot in the shaft. It's a driver & I struggle to hit it 150 yards. This proves that if the club is too heavy it won't work. But what about the ideal weight? I made my M1 an inch longer than standard. Using the handy swingweight estimator http://www.leaderboard.com/SWINGWEIGHT it swings at D9, a bit on the heavy side.

If it was lighter I could swing it faster. Would the extra speed more than compensate for the lower mass moving behind the ball? Would the increase in c² outweigh the reduction in M? I don't know but I'm off soon to the range where I'm going to remove the lightest weight & see what happens.

Does anyone else have experience of this? I'd like to hear.

Wrong equation. C2 isn't speed, it's the speed of light and the equation is used to show the change in energy when there is a change in mass i.e. in an atomic explosion. Generally it is a way of calculating what energy you would get if you could convert mass into pure energy.

What you are describing is momentum which is p=mv just a simple mass x velocity equation.

You are correct in saying that if you swing faster with a lower weight you can get the same momentum as a slower swing and heavier club. There will be an optimum mass of a club that allows for the greatest momentum.

Unfortunately a golf swing isn't linear and has a whole host of variables that need to be take into account and having greater momentum caused by a heavier club or faster swing could ultimately affect your accuracy and or side spin. So you would want the best balance between distance and control which is where we get into the MOI and COR discussion and it gets very messy

 

[ManinBlack]

Wrong equation. C2 isn't speed, it's the speed of light and the equation is used to show the change in energy when there is a change in mass i.e. in an atomic explosion. Generally it is a way of calculating what energy you would get if you could convert mass into pure energy.

What you are describing is momentum which is p=mv just a simple mass x velocity equation.

You are correct in saying that if you swing faster with a lower weight you can get the same momentum as a slower swing and heavier club. There will be an optimum mass of a club that allows for the greatest momentum.

Unfortunately a golf swing isn't linear and has a whole host of variables that need to be take into account and having greater momentum caused by a heavier club or faster swing could ultimately affect your accuracy and or side spin. So you would want the best balance between distance and control which is where we get into the MOI and COR discussion and it gets very messy

Whoops! It's a long time since I did A level Physics. You're quite right but I'll continue with the experiment. Just took the lighter 10g weight out & it's now swinging D1, the same as my 3 wood, which I hit really well.

Thanks for the Physics lesson. Unfortunately I can't edit the caption.

 

[Crow]

I'd say D9 is heavy for a driver.

Re speed and weight, what's really critical is the energy transfer to the ball, or smash factor.

Example, a 100 kg club head swing at 25 mph will have a lot of kinetic energy but little will be transferred to the ball at impact whereas a 0.2 kg club head swinging at 100 mph will have less kinetic energy but will transfer more energy to the ball.

 

[Cols_Ears]

As Hobbit says, there is an optimum swingweight / MOI for each individual. I went through a testing process with a fitter years ago when I had a set of Miura irons fitted. I hit a couple of shots with a 6 iron and the fitter added a couple of grams of lead tape to the head and I hit a couple more this process continued with him recording the data from all the shots all until he spotted what the optimum weight was for me. Then when he got back to his sop he measured the MOI and built the rest of the set to the same. The equivalent swing weight for the 6i was about D4 as I recall.

The club just felt right and seemed to zip through the ball.

I can't imagine trying to play with a driver at D9 - my driver swingweight (based on the MOI matched set) is around D1.5, I'm 6'3" and 14 stone playing off 5 as an aside.

Another thing to thing about is it's not just swingweight, but overall weight of the club that determines how fast you can swing it.

 

[the_coach]

basic ingredient to distance is ball speed - a high launch angle & low spinrate is key

ball speed produced by clubhead speed (assuming all the other optimum layers of the launch condition are all there - strike location/AoA/dynamic loft/LA/face to path etc some of which combine to narrow the spin loft angle & the narrower the spin loft angle the less the spinrate is which goes towards the producing the greatest ball speed for the swing made)

a heavy clubhead a too heavy shaft so heavy overall weight for the golfer is only goin to limit ball speed & distance

as that is goin to limit both the linear & angular speed the clubhead can be moved at - too heavy club & the golfer is not goin to be able to efficiently impart the forces & torques that need to be applied to the golf club to produce chs

it's about the most efficient transfer of chs to bs = distance (high launch- low spin

all the above is why club fitting is of paramount importance