Why is there a difference between a golf club needing to be light as possible so you can swing harder, but if you make a ball lighter you can’t necessarily throw it further than a baseball/cricket ball?
In: 0
For golf clubs:
Imagine a super gigantic hammer, you would not be able to swing it accurately, and will be too slow to give speed to the ball. But if you use something super light, your arms can’t swing it as fast as it could theoretically go. So the club you feel good with, is the heaviest club you can’t swing without losing accuracy or speed.
For the ball:
The energy you give to the ball is: giving speed to its mass.
If the mass is enormous, the ball would barely move. Let’s rule out using a bowling ball for the task.
If the mass is very little, like a ping pong ball, it will move very very fast.
But there’s a a way to that: the faster the ball goes the more the air will slow it down. For every double in speed you get quadruple drag. A ping pong ball will be super fast, but will also experience enormous air resistance. And being so light, the mass of the ball will be stopped easily by air. Now a ping pong ball needs to fly only 1/10 of a second to reach its goal, and 1/10 of a second of air friction is not enough to give troubles.
But at golf the ball has to fly several seconds. Imagine shooting out this super fat ball that just 20 meter from you is already half as fast. The trajectory would be so difficult to calculate for your brain. Factor in the wind, and you can’t hit a thing accurately, definitely not the 5 inch hole at 10m.
So we can rule out the ping pong ball too.
What is left as viable, is a ball heavy enough to carry its movement undisturbed, light enough to be shot at high speed and small enough to have less problems cutting through the air for so many seconds.
Latest Answers