RELATED DISCUSSION Physics of the Golf Swing Professional golfers can generally achieve a club head speed of 100

M.P.H. at the bottom of their swing. Tiger Woods, however, can reach up to 125 M.P.H. According to research done by Raymond Penner, a physicist at Malaspina University-College in British Columbia, there is an optimum lie angle (angle between club shaft and club face) of a golf driver depending on the club head speed. For example, he found that a 7.5 degree lie angle will allow Tiger Woods to maximize his drive while golfers who swing slower would probably use a club with a lie angle closer to 20 degrees. A typical way people try to hit a ball harder is to snap their wrists at the bottom of their swing. Although this may feel like you are getting more power out of your swing, this action actually slows the club head down, according to Theodore Jorensen, a golf expert who has published works on the physics of golf. So how can Tiger Woods, a man who is 61 and only 158 pounds, manage to have one of the longest drives amongst all professional golfers? The answer is that he is able to focus and conserve the energy in his swing through very careful and proper technique. Other Applications In the case of a racecar, the chemical potential energy stored in the fuel is converted to the energy of motion of the car. Chemical potential energy that is not transformed into the energy of motion of the car turns into heat. At racing speeds, cars carry a considerable amount of energy of motion. When the car collides with the wall or another car, the energy of motion must go somewhere as the car comes to a stop. In old-fashioned cars, the energy changed into elastic potential energy as the car was crushed. Modern cars are designed to fly apart so that the pieces of the car carry off much of the energy of motion that the car had going into the collision. The "tub" in which the driver sits comes to a rapid stop and is not deformed, thus protecting the driver. Collisions where wheels and other pieces of the car fly off at high speeds look like disasters, but the disintegration of the car is actually a design feature in order to

protect the driver.

When a ball falls towards the floor, it has energy of motion. When it hits the floor, the energy of motion is converted into the elastic energy of deformation of the ball and a little heat. During the bounce, the energy of deformation is converted back into energy of motion and a bit of heat. On its upward bounce, the energy of motion of the ball turns into gravitational potential energy until the ball comes to a stop with all its energy in the form of gravitational potential energy. On the down bounce, it converts gravitational potential energy to the energy of motion, and the process begins again. Each subsequent bounce is lower than the preceding one because some energy is converted to heat each time. A roller coaster converts gravitational potential energy to the energy of motion at the bottoms of the hills and back again to gravitational potential energy at the tops. Some of the energy is changed by friction to heat of the rails and wheels so that the coaster gradually loses energy and can't climb back up to the top of the original hill. homes is delivered by electric power plants that convert the chemical energy stored in fossil fuels, the nuclear energy stored in uranium or the gravitational potential energy of water into electric energy. The plants cannot convert all the input energy into electric energy and the extra energy is changed into heat in the environment. SOURCES: www.boscobel.k12.wi.us/~schnrich/conservation_of_energy.html ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/.../josh_fritts/swing.html