For example, if you’re standing 20 feet away from me, and you tell me to throw you a ball, how is my arm able to generate almost the exact amount of power required to throw the ball 20 feet? How and where does this “calculation” happen?
In: Physics
Experience. You don’t magically know exactly how hard to throw a ball. And you aren’t doing differential equations at light speed to calculate it. It’s just experience. You throw a ball once and it went too far. The next time you throw a little easier and it’s too short. So you narrow down the amount of power behind a throw until it’s just right.
Theres also a huge window for an acceptable throw, so it’s not all that precise.
The receiver can move their arm to compensate, and while there may be a minimum power to reach a position, you can still reach a target with “too much” power and be on target.
Been throwing stuff for hundreds of thousands probably millions or even 10’s of millions of years. Our brains get it.
It is part of our learning – but our brains are wired to understand this very well. So really our brain just needs to get tuned – to our body.
Have you seen monkeys throw scat? They do not exactly go out and play catch, but they can it you in the face over 20 feet away.
Hunter brains are extremely good at judging the distance and speed of objects.
Knowing how much force your muscles can exert for how to catch that moving object is critical for survival.
This applies to any animal that uses force to defend itself, needing to determine how to engage an enemy.
At some point tools became usable. Many animals can understand tools. But the combination of opposable thumbs and capacity to throw these tools makes you a huge threat.
Humans did not begin as proficient throwers, but we continued to evolve to be so, not so much for the mental capacity, but the shoulder and back construction.
All animals do variations of these calculations. How does a cat know how much force to exert to jump four feet onto the kitchen counter and land precisely? It’s just a base brain estimation of “what percentage of force that I can control do I exert in this situation?” An old person and an old cat both have to make a different calculation than a young example of either, but both do it. And we both occasionally get it wrong.
I wonder if cultures with more popular sports that involve throwing like America (baseball, football, basketball), are better at it than countries where soccer and racquet sports are more popular, like Spain for example.
I took an American football with me to Spain and the locals couldn’t throw it to save their lives, but it is a weird shape with a unique grip so I assumed that was the problem.
Meanwhile we would play soccer and their foot dexterity compared to mine was ridiculous.
Latest Answers