Does a “dry release” actually hurt your bow? If so, why?
In: Physics
Law of conservation of energy.
Think about the power that goes into an arrow when you fire it. It goes flying FAST despite having a decent amount of weight to it. You put a lot of muscle into pulling back on the string. Whether an arrow is present or not, as you’ve drawn back with the bow, you’ve put all that energy into it and your muscles are the only thing holding it steady.
When you release it, all that energy has to go somewhere. With an arrow, it goes into flinging that arrow forward at high speed. In fact the formula for kinetic energy of a moving thing is 1/2 * m * v^(2) and the fact that velocity is squared means that more speed has a much higher impact on energy.
If there’s no arrow… Where does that energy go? It has nowhere to go except the bow itself. If you imagine your muscles as punching an arrow into going flying fast, you’ve just punched the bow just as hard. Or alternatively, imagine if the arrow you shot hit the bow itself.
Yeah, it can do a lot of damage and probably ruin it in a single “shot”.
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