Does having a roll of quarters in your fist actually ever help in a fight? Is it just a myth or is there a biomechanical advantage?
In: Physics
FINALLY someone has asked this important question.
Yes, having a roll of quarters in your fist helps in a fight. Imagine the utility. You could pay surrounding spectators to assist you in the fight OR you could pay off the aggressor! Lastly, if there are no spectators and bargaining with your adversary has failed, you could simply chuck them at the enemy. So yes, they are highly advantageous in a fight.
Fingers (and also knuckles) are not of same strength. When you punch something, the weaker ones give first. You can test this by forming a fist and just pressing on fingers – some can compress further into palm than others.
Roll of quarters puts an uniform, solid wall behind them, so there’s no weaker links in the chain.
As for actual practicality in a fight, it’s quite desperate. If you’re really going to have a fight, it makes all the more sense to put those quarters in a sock or grab a random stick or stone. Even a short stick increases your possible damage by 5-10 times and lessens chance of injury perhaps as much. Fingers are fragile and weak. Few brawlers (doormen, really) I’ve met carry a sap for that same reason. All the power amplification and injury mitigation with no visible, flashy traces on yourself or your opponent. And nearly not lethal, unless you hit the head.
Everyone missed the real answer here.
What a roll of quarters is going to do is allow you to solidify your fist as much as possible prior to impact. The palm and knuckle portion of your hand is not a singular piece of bone, it is comprised of over a dozen small bones. It is fairly easy to break your hand due to this, as the average human adult male can produce enough force via punch to accomplish this. But in a fight, breaking your hand not only would cause you pain, but would cost you one of your weapons/defensive tools.
This is why you see boxers/mma fighters with all of the tape on their hands underneath the gloves. The tape is applied tightly in a manner to help solidify the fist into as much of a singular object as possible in order to protect the fighter.
A roll of quarters, when squeezed, can simulate the effect of taping your hands for a fight, but it can be done substantially faster, and you dont need to have the knowledge of how to tape your hands. You also dont need to deal with removing the tape from your hands. And it is not nearly as visually obvious, in the event you want to be a bit more subtle.
If you want to look at it strictly from a physics POV, use momentum equation. More mass with same velocity = more momentum. More momentum is more force so bigger hit. For example a ping ping ball that weighs 3 grams flying at 40mph is going to hurt alot less than a baseball which weighs 150g flying at that same speed.
A proper punch requires you line up your two big knuckles with the bones in your firearm. This usually means your knuckles are pointed slightly below your wrist.
Your fingers must be curled in and thumb underneath the make your hand as solid as possible AND keep your smaller knuckles out of the way from the striking knuckles (the ones lined up with your arm.)
A roll of quarters is going to make a proper fist impossible but give you slightly more momentum. If you hit something hard like a skull your fingers are going to get hurt bad.
Maybe for soft flesh like a kidney or gut shot the coins might give someone who doesn’t know how to hit a slight advantage but it’s not going to be better than learning how to make a proper fist and throw a proper punch.
If you want a punching weapon get some knuckles. Or spend the money on deescalation techniques and never have to punch anyone.
Yes, it helps. By adding more weight to your fist your punch hits harder. Two things matter when determining the force of an impact, speed and mass. You can swing as fast with a roll in your fist as you can without, and the mass is increased dramatically.
Source: hung out with a bunch of sharps back in the day and this one little kid swore by the quarters. Cops cant call it a weapon, you just need bus money. And a roll of quarters weighs the same as standard MMA gloves. Not too heavy to slow your swing but heavy enough to matter.
Dont know what all these people are talking about your knuckles for – the idea isnt to protect your hands it’s to cause maximum damage to whoever is hassling you with a single punch.
I think it would. It just reinforces the structure of your fist. I have small, weak hands and a roll of quarters would increase the size of my fist and support the inside so the shape doesn’t give out during impact. It would still hurt either way.
Mechanically it’s increasing the mass of your by about half a pound. Assuming you get a bit of a wind up and can get the hand to roughly the same speed as a normal punch (not likely to work for a 1″ punch) you’re going to be able to create more momentum, which translates into more force in the punch. If I had two bats… one ultra light (but didn’t give like a whiffle ball bat) or a heavier metal one… you’d probably want to get hit by the lighter one.
It also make your hand give a little less, so more force is imparted to the blow, but may do more damage to your fingers if they don’t have a place to move. That said, the goal is not to have a prolonged fight and you hope to deliver one knockout blow.
It is more to make your fist land solid. The roll of quarters doesn’t actually do much; technique does more.
That said, you don’t need to hit somebody hard to knock them out, you just have to hit them square and that’s surprisingly hard to do. That’s why boxers spend so much time training technique.
Force is equal to mass times velocity squared. So adding mass to your fist will add to impact damage. Same thinking behind depleted uranium bullets.
IncreAsing speed is bettwr than increasing mass through
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