Week 6 Midweek Update

I mentioned last week about my former obsession with Dover Books CDs of copyright-free images. This one is from a CD of Art Nouveau Designs.
You will find
poetry nowhere
unless you bring
some with you.
- Joseph Joubert

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ONE MILLION DOLLAR PARANORMAL CHALLENGE + BREAKING THE BOARD + MEGAWHOOSH




ONE MILLION DOLLAR PARANORMAL CHALLENGE

It started out as a $1,000 challenge by James Randi in 1964 for any psychic to demonstrate their powers under controlled, scientific conditions. Donations to the James Randi Educational Foundation increased the prize to $10,000, then $100,000 and finally $1,000,000 in 1996. The challenge lasted until 2015, when the money was finally repurposed as grants for worthy causes.

In all that time over a thousand psychics applied to take the test. How many were successful?

Zero.




BREAKING THE BOARD

QI OR PHYSICS?

When attempting to break something, martial arts instructors will often explain what to do in terms of Qi (chi), sometimes known as "energy", but it is not a measurable energy like Kinetic or Gravitational.

Students are instructed to focus their Qi through the board, causing students to hit and continue hitting the board for a longer period of time. We know that more time exerting the same force will apply a larger impulse to the board, causing it to break.

But does having a physics explanation mean that the Qi explanation is necessarily bogus? I've thought a lot about this and come to the conclusion that the martial arts and physics have different ways of explaining because they have different goals. The Qi explanation helps to train people to do the right thing with their bodies. The physics explanation helps to predict outcomes mathematically. Both are useful, depending on what you want to accomplish.

Pictured is my cousin Rob Kloss who is the master of a dojo in Hockessin, Delaware. He and I have lived oddly parallel lives, but that's another story.
Don't try this at home! I'm using a pine board, and I'm hitting with the grain.
This is me breaking a board, which I would have done for you live in class.

Even at 300 frames per second, it's not fast enough to capture what's going on.
This is me breaking a board at 1200 frames per second.

The reason it is necessary to keep on hitting for a long period of time is that you must continue to bend the board downward until a crack appears at the bottom. If you stop before the crack appears, the board will rebound and bounce your hand back, which hurts - believe me, I know.

Make the video full screen then move the slider yourself slowly to see the board bend for a frame or two before the crack appears.


MEGAWHOOSH

REAL OR FAKE?

In the early days of youtube, this video was making the rounds. Is it real? More importantly, can you find evidence in the video itself that indicates that the video is real or faked? If your explanation is correct, it will make use of the Law of Conservation of Momentum.