Did you know? Golf Ball Physics!

I came across some crazy and excellent golf ball physics, so I thought I would share! Here are some of this caveman’s favorites:

• The momentum of a well-hit drive just after impact is roughly equivalent to that of a bullet fired out of a typical 22-caliber rifle. The golf ball which weighs 1.62 oz. can exceed 150-mph after impact with a driver swung at 110-mph. Just after impact, a person hit by a golf ball would experience similar contact forces as that of being struck by a 22-caliber bullet fired from a rifle with the speed of 750-mph. Remember that next time you hear “fore” or you’re thinking about to hitting into a slow playing group in front of you. However, a golf ball does experience drag force during flight that reduces the velocity by more than 50% by the time it lands.
• During collision between the ball and driver, peak force applied to the ball can be as high as 4000 pounds. A swing of 110-mph can result in the ball going from rest to 150-mph in 0.0005 seconds. In fact, during certain stages of impact, the ball experiences more than 50,000-g’s of acceleration!
• An oversized driver can increase distance up to 2% for a 1″ OFF CENTER hit when compared to that of a normal-sized driver. The benefit of having an oversized driver is only for OFF CENTER hits. In other words, hitting the “sweet spot” of an oversized clubhead will result in no advantage in terms of driving distance.
• A ball hit by a pitching wedge can have a backspin of 180 revolutions per second or 10,800 Rpm’s. This is much faster than the allowable Rpm’s for most sports cars. In fact, NASCAR racers average around 8000 Rpm’s while Indy car’s can go as high as 12,000 Rpm’s.

And if that’s not enough, you can read more here.

~Scratch

Bonus: This is what a golf ball looks hitting a steel plate at 150mph!