In a message dated 10/12/2004 2:16:48 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:The ball matches the club head of No. 1 the best. If you can get the natural frequency of the ball to be the same as the natural frequency of the face you will get the best smash...
Do you know of a way to measure a balls natural freq. and a club face's as well, if so that could be huge in fitting.
The clubhead is easier than the ball. Here's how I've measured the clubhead's natural frequency a few times in the past.
Sitting near a piano, tap the middle of the clubface with something hard, preferably something metal. The hard tapping tool should be something that won't resonate itself; first tap it against something hard, and make sure it "thuds" instead of "rings". If it rings, your ear will have two tones (the clubhead and the tapping tool) to confuse it.
OK, tap the clubface and listen to the ring you get. As if you were tuning an instrument, alternately tap the clubface and play a note on the piano, until you have the same tone. Now look up that note in a reference book that translates notes to frequency. (Tables of musical scales are pretty common in science reference books and some music reference books as well.) Now you know the frequency to some reasonable degree. It doesn't have to be too precise, because the ball's resonance peak is quite broad.
Problems with this method:
* You need something of an ear for music. In particular...
* You need to be able to hear which octave a note is in, or you can be off by a factor of two or more.
* Modern drivers with big spring faces have more of a "clank" than a "ring". (Drivers from five years ago were much easier to measure.) That means that the tone is polluted by harmonics. Your ear has to be good enough to hear the fundamental and match the fundamental to a note on the piano.
Finding the resonant frequency of the ball will take a lot more thought. Maybe somebody else knows how. A strobe series just after impact (like the one in Bernie's collection from Spalding) might be an approach, but I think the precision would nor be very good.
Cheers! DaveT
