Sword Motions & Impacts - major new article

[John_Clements]

A very important new article by researcher George Turner has now been made available to our public readers. It presents a revolutionary new look at the dynamics and physics of swords. Please take a look and offer you feedback.

Sword Motions and Impacts

JC

[Casper Bradak]

An outstanding article! Thanks!

[Lance Chan]

What a grand way to dispel sword myth. Excellent work! It enlightened me on the true meaning of center of percussion, and confirmed my findings that it's the velocity at the sword tip that makes the cut, instead of the popular believe of the "COP" cutting.

I also performed the test as the article instructed to find out which sword of mine is better made.

All in all, this is an article I wish there will be a Chinese version that I can spread around among my circle. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

[Lance Chan]

As I've spread the news of the article to swordforum, Angus Trim has made the following comments:

Actually not to bad. Still, he's somewhat wrong on "harmonics".....

Add harmonics to what he has written, and you may come fairly close........

He's right about the size of pommels.........

Misses things like distal taper.....

And it looks like ARMA finally has discovered that tip cuts are best for soft targets, cop cuts best for harder targets.......

Some of the other stuff has been tried, go back to September, and you'll see a physics test done at WMAW at Racine.....

I've had others talk to me about a pendulum effect, and that may work on some models, on others its, well, not the full answer.

Might work on tang bending...... I for one like a spring tempered tang.........

Anyways, another theory for all this is always welcome. I doubt that the "final solution" has been forwarded by anyone yet.....

[John_Clements]

That's ironic. Trim's countless nonsense statements on replica swords in the past helped inspire George's very article --with input from actual master swordsmiths Peter Johnson and Paul Champaign. I imagine George and the guys will find that humorous.

JC

[Guest]

It's ironic that the same guy who two years back bad mouthed us for pointing out the flaws and weaknesses of his fabricated swords, later did a complete 180 and "thanked" us for helping "improve" problems with his blades --the very same ones which he earlier had raved were so "great." I'd give any comments Trim offers on sword physics their appropriate weight (...I know the real swordsmiths do).

Todd

[TimSheetz]

Hi All,

I mentioned this over on SFI and I will do so here.

Hi Gus, (as I said on SFI *g*) I think your review of the article is too abreviated, please broaden the discourse.

To the folks posting, Math is science. Science contains facts. Research and finding the facts is a strongpoint of ARMA. "Always question everything" is one of our themes. So we must even question our own and others but we will get more out of it if we question calmly.

We all care and are impassioned by our chosen subject (swords- YEAH!). Let's stick to concise verbage and non-poetical, Non-emotionally charged language and we will have a much better time here. This is one of my pet peeves so forgive me if I am annoying right now! (tough luck!

Remember, art is a Science. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Tim Sheetz
ARMA-ROK

[Jared L. Cass]

Very cool article! Since I've never claimed to be a scientist/mathematician, it's going to take a while to fully digest! But, that said, the possible future impact on repo. swords will be truly amazing. Something to look forward too. On a side note, those people (as mentioned in the article) who don't believe that advanced technologies could have existed in medieval/dark-age Europe, are probably the same ones who still believe that the pyramids were built by slaves using nothing but their hands and worn out backs! Any person with a somewhat active brain will realize that in the past, there were more technologies than modern man gives credit to. Did anybody get the chance to see the Nova series last year where groups of engineers, timber workers, and archeologists built a trebuchet', raised an obelisk, and constructed a Roman bath house? It was truly enlightening and fun to watch! Perhaps now they should do a program on swords...it'd be great! <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Jared L. Cass, Wisconsin

[Lance Chan]

Dan Harden has made some comments on E budo forum. Link as follow:

http://www.e-budo.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=9a68d28d18e6511a72bb3f39888d09ab&amp;threadid=16257

[John_Clements]

I don't think science matters much to certain budo types ...after all they are using their "ki" when they cut and their swords have mystical properties our lowly European ones don't.

[MurrayMoore]

I have not looked into this whole issue like I should have done earlier, so I've dragged out my old statics and mechanics books. This is a bit out of my area, plus I'm not as sharp as when I was in school, so it's taking me a bit of time.




Simplified COP and nodal vibration video clip:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/howfar4.html

[John_Clements]

I have seen Hank Reinhardt cut impressively with the middle of the blade on all kinds of swords ...and I've also seen him do impressive tip cuts....so I try to practice cutting all along my sword to different affects.

JC

[George Turner]

Hi all,

I'm working to tone down some of the steamier bits of my article. I got way too involved with my subject matter. Anyway, the baseball research was about the only thing close to the sword problem, and they know their stuff. What's really weird is that people seem to have known an awfully lot about sword physics back in the Renaissance, involving COP and such. If you start tracing baseball history to it's dim origins, you end up in the same period. Any bets on whether the first baseball bats were "designed"? Where could we find the oldest baseball bat? It would be interesting to look at the numbers on that one.

Best Regards,

George Turner