Powerful Smash vs Fast Smash

Not sure about this but sometimes i felt that some player smash, even if its not quite fast but feel heavy when block it while some other tho the smash seems faster but i didnt feel the heavy impact.

Maybe its about those thing between power & fast, but cant explain it why or how.

 

The momentum of an object is defined as velocity*mass, so speed=power in our case

 

can you link to the review? also often it's possible to comment on the review, can you ask them and reply with what they say?
and maybe you can correct them too.

I think power and force are perhaps irrelevant in badminton..and perhaps anybody that thinks it is relevant doesn't understand basic physics. (not that I do, but), P=F*V and F=MA and what we want to look at is Velocity on contact.. I understand from speaking to a physicist and reading a contributor here, that the acceleration at the moment of contact is irrelevant to what is transferred to the shuttle. So since Force is irrelevant, Power is irrelevant.

Momentum is what counts..

What he is saying is probably not correct in physics..

but what he may get getting at, and i'm not sure how this translates into physics..

but a short sharp swing might look(from the big swing), and sound "not powerful"

compared to a big swing where the player puts lots of bodyweight into it.

So maybe he is thinking about the momentum of the racket.

Maybe a short sharp swing is low momentum but with that racket, could have a proportionally good 'carry over' onto the shuttle..

Whereas a big swing, while it may even make the shuttle go faster, it won't make it go much faster.. Or perhaps, and I don't know, but perhaps, it may not make the shuttle go as fast, because of some deep physics issues with strings and string tension..

And there's an interesting question there.. would a racket with a higher momentum always make the shuttle go faster.. maybe there is also a control issue at higher momentums too, though that might not be of practical consequences..

It'd be really interesting to see a graph of racket momentum compared to the momentum of the shuttle on impact.

and a graph comparing how much racket momentum can be generated, compared to length of swing.

 

My speculation is that the smash that you describe as "not quite as fast but feels heavy to block" is sliced smash (meaning the shuttlecock is spinning) while "faster but does not feel heavy to block" does not have much spin in it.

 

The shuttle has a fix mass, therefor the force, with which the shuttle will hit the racket will only depends on its speed.

Well, the aero-dynamic of the shuttle let it lose speed quite quickly. So, a smash, which is directed downward will eventually hit the ground, therefor it is harder to rate the speed of a shuttle hitting the ground after a few milliseconds, but you can feel the speed by the impact power on your racket.

E.g. someone who is able to jump smash from the backline with a super fast smash will feel less powerful (because of losing lot of speed due to the longer distance), than a weaker player who smashs a shuttle close to the frontcourt with a steep angle (because of a much shorter distance it will hit the racket with higher speed, thought the initial speed was slower).

Btw, therefor it would be better to train a steeper angle instead of a more powerful smash.

 

There are only a few people on this forum with good physics knowledge and i'm not one of them, but, I try to check with people that know physics, when I can, and I try to take care to use terms like 'force' correctly.

How far did you study physics?

You say "The shuttle has a fix mass, therefor the force, with which the shuttle will hit the racket will only depends on its speed."

force = mass * acceleration

So since as you say, the mass is fixed(while a calculation is done) (like I suppose the mass of most things?!)

Then shouldn't you say force depends on acceleration?

Also people have already pointed out that what is really relevant is not Force. It's Momentum.

momentum = mass x velocity

 

How is a powerful smash different from a fast smash?

In a powerful smash player uses more power/energy which is transferred to shuttle as kinetic energy, more kinetic energy means more velocity.

By fast smash if you mean the player's reaction time and footwork are fast before hitting the smash then fast smash will be more effective than a slow powerful smash.

 

To answer the OP, I think the review was talking about how easily the racket could generate power. Stiffness combined with lower mass in the head compared to some other rackets might be the reason. It was just a comparison but does not mean the racket is not capable. Whilst it is possible to hit a shuttle very fast with it but it was not as easily achieved - good if you use 100% effort, not so good with 75% or less.

But the brain is able to process complex inputs from different sources and combine them into an impression of your surroundings. Sometimes correctly, sometimes accentuating something that will exaggerate your impressions. It could be as simple as believing a powerful hit is one that sounds louder or feels harder when it hits your racket. Maybe something else? In reality "powerful" is an impression, "speed" is quantifiable.

 

I hope you don't need to study physics to put something in a rough relation.

We talk about the kinetic energy at the time the shuttle hits the racket, which should be
KE = 0.5 × m × v^2 (m=mass of shuttle, v=velocity of shuttle at time of impact)

The kinetic energy is although
KE = F × d (force over a distance d)

Therefor...
F = (0.5 * m * v^2) / d

This is the force over a small distance (the shuttle hits the racket string, then the string will bend and absorb all the energy (shuttle stops), before it give back the energy including some additional energy (from swing), so we talk about a really low distance the shuttle travels towards the racket face at impact time).

This is for sure not the exact, real calculation of the force or kinetic energy, but it should demonstrate, that the force (kinetic energy) increases with speed, when the mass is constant. This energy will be transfered to the racket, which will be transfered to the hand->wrist->arm etc., it is eventuall a force you can feel.

[Reference: https://sciencing.com/calculate-force-impact-7617983.html]

 

What the....
My brain start to smoke...
Just hit the shuttle already....
I dont want to calculate in math ways every time im about to hit the shuttle.
Im just use my feeling & thats enough...

 

I'm sure nobody expects you to do that on or off the court.

But some people might be interested in or educated about, the nature of some of these things , maybe while holding a racket, or observing a court, or thinking about it mentally. It's not for everyone. You can just hit the shuttle and you don't have to worry about doing things that bother you and that you don't like.

 

I'm no expert but it seems to me that where you wrote V^2(which isn't even A), you meant "A". A=acceleration. And A involves a difference in speed. Also it's m/(s^2). Not V^2.

It's (V2-V1)/(t2-t1), But V2-V-1 is irrelevant. V2-V1 is used to show you the change in speed.

An object can travel really fast, but if it has no acceleration then V1=V2 So your so-called V^2 , by which you meant m/(s^2), or A, is actually 0. So Force is 0. And since you were looking at mass and velocity, you don't mean force, you mean momentum. And then it's m*v.

So it seems to me that this shows the important physics point. that you want to look at momentum, not force.

I will look into what you said about the KE.

Thanks

 

That is perfect, honestly. As long as it works, all will be okay, and for sure an experienced coach will know best what will work and what will not work.

I'm >46 yo, so I had many experiences with sports and diet, and over the years it happened a lot that I hit some kind of plateau (performance, weight loss etc.). After a few years I wanted to understand why I didn't make any progress and at this time I started to try to understand the science behind what I want to archive. And, thought even science do not understand everything related to the body yet, it helped me a lot to avoid pitfalls and waste time and energy on stuff which is ineffective or pure bro-science and eventually I made progress with a lot more ease then I would ever have assumpted was possible.

E.g. I weight less at 46yo than at 19yo, and this are currently 8 kg (~10%) less than at the time I started to try to understand the stuff about metabolism etc.