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Let's
Talk About GOLF BALLS
This article was written to answer many of the most frequently asked questions on this topic. Ihope you find all of
this information helpful.
I remember when I was a boy and my dad had some golf balls in
the garage and I was bored and was wondering what the heck is in
these things?
So like a young foolish boy that I was I got a very sharp knife and
began to try and open it inside. Well about after hour and half of
cutting it I finally broke through first hitting many rubber bands
wrap together.
I thought to myself that's why they bounce, so I kept at I wanted to
get to the middle of the golf ball. Well I wish I wasn't so
persistent because when I did hit the middle I will never forget it
the rest of my life. Without warning a white sticky substance
exploded in the air all over me and the garage. Well I can tell you
I never did that again.
To begin with the chemistry of air pressure, turbulence, and
aerodynamics, surface structures are imperative physical element.
History has it that there are things that appear to be unusual on
their make-up hundreds of years ago which finally came up with a
better composition based on scientific research. And a golf ball is
the best paradigm of this theoretical stand in history.
During the earliest days of golf on the eastern seashore of
Scotland, most players worn old apparatus in order to play the game
in a more disorganized and casual way. Here, the first clubs and golf
balls are made up of wood.
It was on 1618 that the feather golf ball was
at last introduced. This was commonly known as the "Featherie".
This feather golf ball was a handcrafted ball made with goose
feathers securely pressed into a horse or cowhide sphere.
This is
being done while the ball is still wet. After drying, the leather
shrank and the feathers expanded creating a hardened ball.
But because these kinds of golf balls are custom handcrafted,
they generally cost higher than the clubs. In doing so, just a few
special individuals could afford to play golf during those times.
Next came the Guttie golf ball. This earliest kind of golf ball was
made from the rubber like sap of the Gutta tree that can be found in the tropics. Normally, these
Guttie balls can be easily shaped into a sphere when hot and
eventually used as a golf ball.
With its rubber quality, guttie
balls can be cheaply reproduced and can be easily repaired by
reheating and reshaping.
However, between the two earliest forms of golf balls, the feather
golf ball was said to travel farther than the gutties. This is due
to the smooth exterior of the gutties that limits the capacity of
the golf ball to cover more distance.
With this new scientific examination, the developers of golf ball at
last came up with balls with the "dimples" that are predominant in modern golf balls
nowadays.
Dimples are crafted into golf balls so as to cut down the
aerodynamic drag, which will be acting on the ball if it were completely smooth. This is because smooth
balls, when sailing through the air, leave a large pocket of
low-pressure air in its stir therefore creating a drag.
With the
application of drag, the ball slows down. therefore, by having
dimples on golf balls, the pressure differential goes down and the drag force is reduced.
These dimples create turbulence in the air surrounding the golf
ball. This, in turn, forces the air to clasp the golf ball more closely. By doing so, the air trails the
warp created by the ball towards the back instead of flowing past it. This results to a smaller wake
and lesser drag.
Dimples also help players to put backspin on a shot making the golf
ball break off on the putting green. The idea of putting dimples on
golf balls can be traced back during the gutta percha stage. Coburn
Haskell introduced the one-piece rubber cored ball encased in a
gutta percha sphere.
It was during this
period when the playersobserved how their shots become more and more
predictable as their balls turned irregular from play. When William
Taylor applied the dimple model to Haskell ball in 1905, golf balls
at last took their modern shape.
From then on, dimpled golf balls were officially used in every golf
tournament. In 1921, the golf balls took its form with standard size
and weight.
Today, there is an
plentiful selection of golf balls to fit different golf game
and circumstance. There are golf balls that offer control, while
some offer distance. In whatever ways golf balls vary, only one thing is common and known.
Golf balls are not just
elements of the sports arena; they are more than ever paradigm of a
concept in physics.
I want to thank you for visiting. Go ahead and look around to find
additional helpful tips and information.
By Tim B. Miller DiscoverArticles.com
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