Was this scientific study done on John's stroke while HE was spinning the ball or someone else's?
No, it was not, and that is a very valid point IMO... but I'm not going toe-to-toe with the scientists here. I've already seen where that can lead.
I do understand the physics well enough (hell, I was so good in college physics they made me take it twice Lol), but there are so many other factors that can come into play besides angular deflection theory. Kamui claims that their chalk itself creates less CB deflection, but that flies in the face of the "end mass alone" theory (I haven't seen Kamui's supporting experiments to know whether this is pure hype or if their claim has merit).
Clearly, more work needs to be done. Like the global warming issue, the science is supposedly "in", but both sides of the fence make valid points. The fact that the vast majority of climate scientists agree with the GW hypothesis doesn't make them correct. Science is a process, not an absolute. Sometimes it yields fact, but usually it just raises more questions (if it is conducted correctly), merely leading to further experimentation.
For example, physicists once hypothesized that the electrons in an atom sat inside of a positively-charged "substance", instead of spinning around in empty space at an insane speed in discrete orbitals. They even had a cutsie name for their atomic model - the "plum pudding" model, because electrons were like plums moving around in a pudding-like matrix. Then Ernest Rutherford set up an experiment to establish subjective evidence of the model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger-Marsden_experiment
Known as the Geiger-Marsden experiment, he had the experimenters look for deflection of alpha particles as they passed through a gold foil. The theory behind the model predicted that there would be very little deflection as they passed through a primarily homogenous substance. What happened instead is best described by Rutherford himself:
It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realized that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive center, carrying a charge.
Note that Rutherford's understanding of simple Newtonian physics (and deflection Lol) was all he needed to interpret that the plum pudding model was not only wrong, it was extremely wrong. The results of this experiment changed nuclear physics forever, and opened the way for modern science as we know it today.
Anyway, suffice it to say that JS was having difficulties making high-speed spin shots with the LD shaft, and at the level you guys play at, just one random miss can knock you out of the tourney. That would make him a "non-issue" on the pro tour as he claims was the case.
At this point, I would be highly interested in having John himself serve as a test robot in another high-speed analysis. Different shafts, different tips, different chalk, different speeds, different cloths, different relative humidity and temperature, varying amounts of spin in every possible axis, etc.
Personally, I would not be shocked with the results either way they turned out. :wink:
BTW I love the way you created a free-for-all thread here with your silly title. Sucked us in good for a minute there, but then the thread got a life of its own, which is pretty cool.
