Sliding weights

[fearn]

Hi Jens,

Just thinking about it, you might want to specify a few more things, namely the length of the blade, and the position of the slide relative to the blade (especially the center of impact).

Just out of curiosity, is a 90 cm slide reasonable? Most swords are less than 1 m long, and assuming a handle that is 20 cm long, you would need a 1-handed sword that has a 1.2 m blade simply to keep the weights inside, and to leave 10 cm at the tip for a solid hit. Then you have to assume that the weight can go from near the hilt (say 20 cm) in a vertically held blade, to 1.1 m on a horizontally held blade, as it hits, over about 0.1 second (I'm guessing, on the basis of 1 m/sec=3.6 km/hr). Does that sound reasonable? Ideally we'd want a perfectly frictionless slide, but I suspect that a bead in a slot (the weights I've seen), would also experience significant friction, especially if the sword was bloodied after a strike.

Neat problem though. I'll be interested to see what the physicists say about it.

Fearn