How hard do you think you could hit a golf ball?
When a golf club is swung and comes in contact with a ball, there is an elastic collision that takes place. The ball squishes and uses the restored energy to rebound off of the club.
It goes from elastic deformation to plastic deformation. So at what point does this change happen?
In this video, you get to learn from two great Youtube makers! Destin Sandlin (Smarter Every Day) is one of the best engineers to follow on Youtube right now. Destin works with Mark Rober (the guy that created his own porch package theft boobytrap) to create an experiment that will test just how hard you can hit a golf ball before it breaks its shape.
How Does The Experiment Work?
Instead of hitting the ball with a club we are going to hit the club with a ball. First, the makers create a vacuum cannon that can shoot a golf ball hundreds of miles per hour without using explosives.
Here is how the thing works.The barrel is just barely big enough for the golf ball to slide inside. So we push the ball all the way to the back of the tube and we seal up both sides.
If you pull a vacuum on the inside of the tube Nature’s abhor a vacuum so if you quickly vent one side to Atmosphere all the air will rush into the pipe and push the golf ball down the tube.
This creates stupid fast velocities.
To make it fire even faster they put a positive pressure tank on the back side and pressurize the tube with air so it can fire the golf ball at over 500 miles per hour.
Golf ball impact can handle impact just about 300 mph.
Once you hit 400 or 500 mph, you begin to see deformation in the ball.
Want to learn something new every Monday? Join Maker Message Monday!
