Slinging: Simple Rotational Dynamics Applied

About slinging.  It's basic rotational dynamics.  Need I say more?  The sling has three parts.  The pocket, the stay, and the trigger.  The stay and the trigger are the two ropes attached to the pocket, and as you would imagine from the names, the stay is the rope you hold on to, and the trigger is the one that you release.  Now WHEN you release it is the MAIN issue.  To make things simple, imagine yourself throwing a baseball, and for this example, picture yourself watching yourself throw from the side.  You wind up, your arm goes traces a circle over your head and your wrist snaps and releases at the top of your swing, at the top of the arc.  But the ball doesn't go up, it goes forward... roughly 90 degrees from the place your released it.  Now imagine that that same ball is on a tether.  As you are swinging the ball in a circle, each moment of the ball's circular travel, it yearns to travel in a straight line... but at there is a competing force.  At the same time the tether overpowers the ball's yearning and keeps the ball consistently turning around the circle.  The tether pulls the ball towards the center of this circle where you are holding the tether.  So when you release the tether, it loses all ability to overpower the ball's yearning to go forward.  So at the moment you release the tether, the ball will get it's wish and travel in a straight line that is perpendicular (90 degrees) to the line formed by the tether at that moment.   Slinging is the same way, when you release the trigger, the pocket opens and the ball will travel in a straight line from that moment on.  See... simple rotational  dynamics.

Load it, Swing it, Release it.
Slingmoore

Slinging Basics... and by basics, I mean physics.

Consider circular motion:

An object moving in a circle is only doing so because it is forced to. At every moment it's circular motion it's being accelerated toward a center, in this case by our stays. But, at the same time, at every moment the object would much rather travel in a straight line, and will do so if given the chance.

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The slinger intends to give the object that chance... BUT wants to choose the moment. The moment, of course is the release of the trigger. As soon as the trigger is released the object will move in a straight line that is perpendicular (90 degrees) to the radius of the circular motion. Simply put, when released, the object will travel along the tangent at any point on the circle.

This isn't surprising considering simple throwing. With a baseball, if you want the ball to go roughly forward, you have to release it at the top of your swing. When you release a frisbee to throw it forward you release it out to the side. In both of these cases the release is 90 degrees from the direction of travel. This is more difficult with the sling because the stays put the slinger at a distance instead of directly holding the object.

But of course the real world is not frictionless so there are three delays you need to consider:

1. Trigger Friction

2. Object/Pouch Friction

3. Weight of the Pouch and Stay

These three factors will delay the moment that the object actually leaves on it's new life as a tangent traveller which means only one thing for the slinger... RELEASE YOUR TRIGGER JUST A FRACTION OF A SECOND BEFORE THIS PERFECT 90 DEGREES.

get your sling on...

mr slingmoore