Common misconceptions
- Thread starter ratcues
- Start date
im not a cuemaker...:embarrassed2:
but
i have bought many cues during my
LOOKING FOR THE HOLY GRAIL
phase....to bad its the indian and not the arrow
i always bought an ob1 shaft to match the pin with the same tip(kamui black medium )
what i found was
the butts feel in my hand and the balance point played a BIG factor in my opinion of the butt
also some butts had better "feel" ie feedback to the hit
and some seemed to move the cue ball better
all from many cuemakers
so
my opinion
fwiw
the butt IS IMPORTANT
jmho
That is too much reading for me. But many years ago someone checked the speed of the break with various people using different weight cues and there was very little difference no matter which weight cue they used. It was in one of the magazines.
It's all in the hand of the shooter..... what most people really don't grasp is that there is no more energy in the cue ball whether you hit it with a 17oz cu or a 25oz cue. The only increase or decrease in the energy that hits the rack is the speed of the cue ball.
I always suggest a break cue the same weight as your shooter. That way it just feels the same in your hand. I do believe in very hard break tips to make the ball bounce off the tip and add a minute amount of speed to the cue ball. A soft tip tends to cushion the blow and absorb some of the speed.
Kim
That's because the weight difference becomes nullified as soon as a hand grips the cue, hereby including the weight of the arm, their grip, technique, and strength into the equation.
I'm confused. In the bolded numbers, are you talking about the speed of the moving cue or the CB speed immediately after contact with the tip?
It is all in general terms and 'mph' is not how this this would be calculated. I just used it as a reference everyone can grasp.
Look at it like this;
Ek= 1/2 mass(18oz) X velocity squared(10mph)
Assume the mass is same, you can see when you square 10 you get 100. When replaced with 20, it turns to 400.
Now, assume the velocity equal (20mph, for example), you multiply the 400 times 18oz compared to 20oz. It is not near as big of a difference.
Therefore, velocity is much more important in this energy equations than is mass.
The reason to use a lighter cue has to do with inertia. It is easier to go from rest to striking speed than it is to move a heavier cue from rest to striking speed. Imagine starting to push a Corvette vs a pickup.
I don't think for a minute that there is a huge difference between how fast a player can move an 18oz cue vs a 20oz cue but the physics of the action do not lie. I do believe there is a "terminal speed" where a given player cannot physically move his/her arm any faster.
Here is a good example; years ago, there was a vendor at the APA tournament in Vegas. He would have players come up and ask for the heaviest cue he had so they could use it as a breaker. Oddly enough, he has an all metal cue that weighed 72oz. He would challenge them to break a rack at the 'speed break' booth next to his. No one could break worth a damn and it proved his point, albeit, in an extreme and unrealistic way.
I'm not disagreeing with anything you are saying, but the equation you are using as applied to this problem doesn't seem to account for the energy remaining in the still moving cue immediately following contact.
If you were to completely let go of the cue at the last minute, it would still be traveling at 1/2 its original speed after impact (for an 18oz cue striking a 6oz CB, assuming a perfect elastic collision). So, only a portion of the cue's energy gets transferred to the CB, not all of it. Not a major point, but it helps to explain why small changes in cue speed don't necessarily translate to enormous changes in CB speed.
As far as the terminal speed of the swinging arm, of course, there are limits. It's pretty obvious to me that the fact that a baseball pitcher can move his hand at over 90 MPH is at least in some part due to the fact that he is only accelerating a 5.5oz ball, rather than a 21oz cue that has four times the mass. Neglecting time and distance (which are big contributing factors in throwing a fast ball), accelerating a 21oz cue from any resting point to a particular end point will require four times as much sustained force as accelerating a baseball would to reach the same final velocity.
Bottom line is that the heavier cue will always be slower at impact than a lighter cue when using the same force. The car vs. truck pushing analogy you used is spot on, and it is something I have often used myself in explaining acceleration to folks who've never taken high school physics.
The equation applies to the cue. There is a different equation for the moment of impact and the resulting transfer of energy. There will be yet another for the cue ball itself. I am speaking in the most general of terms.
The problem with saying that is people are not stroking 5 pound lead rods. Someone may be strong enough to stroke a 19 ounce cue as quickly as they can an 18 ounce. The bottleneck for some people would not be their strength, it would be their muscle twitch speed. In sports, it is widely known that there are fast twitchers and slow twitchers. If you have a hefty fellow who is a slow twitcher and the speed of his stroke (when applying as much strength/leverage/weight as he can) for a 19 ounce cue is the same as an 18 ounce cue, more force will be applied to the cueball for HIM using the 19 ounce cue.
To study this completely for a single player would require many repeated breaks with many cues. If a player broke 50 times with a 17 ounce cue, a 17.1 ounce cue, a 17.2 ounce cue, a 17.3 ounce cue...etc etc etc and outliers (top 5 and bottom 5) were dropped for each cue and the results (stroke speed) were all averaged for each cue, what you would find would be a cue weight class distribution for that player in terms of stroke speed. Applying energy formulas to each weight class would result in a curve with a relative maxima of force applied for *that* player. That data would suggest the optimal cue weight for a break cue for *that* player. That optimal cue weight probably varies from one individual to another by about 4-5 ounces.
Obviously, none of this takes into account loss of energy due to tip compression, cue flex, off center hit, etc. To isolate only potential of the cue, the data recorded needs to be stroke speed, not cueball speed after the strike.
So the extreme of a 72 ounce cue not being able to break that hard would also apply to a 4 ounce cue I am guessing.
The test done for the magazine was allowing people to use normal range weight cues. I don't remember the exact weights, but I think it was like 17 to 22 ounce or at least in that neighborhood.
If a bicycle hits a 25 pound ball at 30 MPH would it send the ball flying faster than a car that hits a 25 pound ball at 20 MPH?
The test done for the magazine was allowing people to use normal range weight cues. I don't remember the exact weights, but I think it was like 17 to 22 ounce or at least in that neighborhood.
If a bicycle hits a 25 pound ball at 30 MPH would it send the ball flying faster than a car that hits a 25 pound ball at 20 MPH?
Regarding the 4 ounce cue, Bruce Lee might have been able to break better with a 4 oz cue since his twitch speed was incredible, but probably not. You go too light and there is no increase in velocity of the cue to overcome the loss of force due to weight reduction. We aren't wired that way. We don't have spring loaded arms to generate enough velocity.
Regarding your bicycle and car question, you didn't say how much the car and bicycle weighs. Come up with weights for both and use the formula to find out. The weights are so disparate, of course, that the difference in velocity isnt enough so the car would exert more force. If the bicycle were going 200 mph, the Answer might change. Again, just use the formula.
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Breaking with heavier cue or lighter cue still comes down to technique imo.
AND the persons' tendencies or physical make-up.
Those who can't explode/whip on the cue ball are better of weighted break cue imo. I've put 2 oz lead under the pin and have a light handle for a breaker.
To get a decent break, all was needed was forearm action. No need for bustamante or hillbilly hip action.
AND the persons' tendencies or physical make-up.
Those who can't explode/whip on the cue ball are better of weighted break cue imo. I've put 2 oz lead under the pin and have a light handle for a breaker.
To get a decent break, all was needed was forearm action. No need for bustamante or hillbilly hip action.
Agreed. RESULTS are dictated by technique and when mortals try and put everything into a break they can muster technique tends to break (no pun intended) down. My posts speak to the theory/stereotype and potential of a particular weight of a cue.
I once made a 4oz "cue" out of the butt of one of my graphite fishing rods with a tip glued on the end. Very interesting result, but nothing that wouldn't be predicted.
A while back I made this chart in Excel that shows the effect of increasing cue mass on final CB speed. I used the following formula:
Vb/Vs = 2/[1+(Mb/Ms)]
Vb = velocity of ball
Vs = velocity of stick
Mb = mass of CB
Ms = mass of cue stick
Cue mass is along the x-axis and is in ounces. The "speed multiplying factor" is on the y-axis.
As you can see, it is a game of increasingly diminishing returns as the cue weight goes much beyond 24oz. As you continue to add mass, you eventually get to a limit beyond which no further gains in speed are possible. As the cue weight approaches infinity, the speed multiplying factor approaches a limit of 2.
Plugging the numbers into the above equation, I would think that the 25 pound ball hit by the bicycle (including a 175 pound cyclist) at 30 MPH would have a slightly faster separation speed after impact than the same ball ball hit at 25MPH by a car... or even by a train.
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Just sitting on the sidelines, enjoying the entertainment. 
I can really add to this but I just don't have the time right now.
I can really add to this but I just don't have the time right now.
So what's the decision (?!?!?!?) on this one ? Misconception or not ? Depending on the answer I may or may not have another misconception about cuemakers :wink:
Dave