[Jeff]

nmgolfer

You wrote-: "What you are saying is absolutely laughable. ITS COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY RIDICULOUS. I would be laughing if I weren't crying. No wonder GOLF myths have perpetuated for so long and are so deeply ingrained."

Whenever I read statements like this, then I know that the person is not dealing with the "issues", but taking an escapist route to avoid dealing with the "issues". You have not provided any proof that my opinions re: work or centripetal force are invalid. You have not even provided a counterargument.

As a physicist, you think that work is only performed when an object moves in space.

Example 1

So, if a person leans against a 6 foot diameter redwood tree and pushes against the tree with all his strength in an attempt to move the tree, you state that the person is not doing any work because the tree doesn't move. If after 15 minutes of continuous pushing, the person falls to the ground in a state of total exhaustion, you are presumably stupefied because he didn't do any work. You apparently fail to understand that muscular energy was used to push against the tree, and that the use of muscular energy represents work - from the person's perspective. It may not be useful work, but energy was expended and the person therefore worked. The amount of muscular work performed by the person pushing against the tree could theoretically be computed by an exercist physiologist - even though you have already concluded that the person didn't do any work because the tree didn't move.

Example 2

Now, if that same person leaned against a 1" diameter sapling tree, and the sapling tree bent-over horizontal to the ground, you would conclude that the person performed work - because he moved the vertical tree through a 90 degree angle. In your mental framework as a physicist, he performed much more work in this second example because he moved the tree - while in the first example he didn't perform any work because the tree didn't move.

OK. We see the world differently.

What really puzzles me is that you believe that it takes no energy (requires no work) to restrain an object been pushed by a force. So, consider the situation of a mother riding in a roller coaster while holding her 4 year child in her arms, and imagine that the mother is restrained with seat belts while her child is only restrained by the mother's hold with her arms. Then imagine the roller coaster going through a tight bend at 100mph. The mother has two choices. She could refuse to expend any energy by deliberately holding onto her child with her arms, and the consequence of that decision would be a child being propelled into space with an amazing amount of projectile force when the roller coaster enters the tight bend at 100mph. Alternatively, the mother could use all of her arm strength to hold the child tightly against her body to prevent the child from being ejected from the roller coaster. In my world, the mother used an enormous amount of energy to perform that holding action, and that represents work. In effect, I would say that the mother was performing the work of a centripetal action - the action of ensuring that her child continued moving at 100mph on a circular path rather than a straight line path. In your world, the mother was not performing any work because she didn't use tangential forces to move the child (having a certain quantifiable mass) a certain distance.

Jeff.