Does a “dry release” actually hurt your bow? If so, why?
In: Physics
Yes, it can easily break the bow.
The reason for this comes down to the law of conservation of energy: while energy can change forms pretty easily, it cannot be created or destroyed by ordinary means. When you draw back a bow, you store a lot of energy in it, mostly through the bending of the arms. When you release the bow, all of that energy gets dumped out at once.
When you’re properly firing an arrow, the bow cheats conservation of energy just a little bit: it doesn’t destroy any energy, but it dumps almost all of it into the arrow. The arrow reacts by moving away very quickly, carrying all that energy with it until it either hits the ground or a target. The bow doesn’t have to do anything with all that energy, because it’s gone, so it is unharmed.
But this only works when there’s an arrow to dump energy into. When you dry-fire a bow with no arrow, the energy has no place to go except back into the bow. And the bow isn’t built to play fair: it would have to be much heavier and more rigid to be able to withstand that much of a sudden shock, and that would make it less effective at its job. The energy basically rips the bow apart, because it can’t take the strain.
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