Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T00:07:08.170Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The golf ball aerodynamics of Peter Guthrie Tait

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Chris Denley  and
Chris Pritchard
Chris Denley
Affiliation:
British Aerospace, Brough, North Humberside HU15 1EQ, McLaren High School, Callander FK17 8JH
Chris Pritchard
Affiliation:
British Aerospace, Brough, North Humberside HU15 1EQ, McLaren High School, Callander FK17 8JH
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The eminent physicist, Peter Guthrie Tait, having constructed mathematical models of the flight of a golf-ball and having carried out an extensive series of experiments to evaluate their parameters, specified the maximum distance a golf ball could be made to carry by the most accomplished golfer. He was then upstaged by his son who hit a monumental drive which pitched even further. The golfing press of the day - what there was of it - was happy to run the story and scientists themselves seemed to enjoy the joke at Tait’s expense. Macfarlane, for example, related the anecdote in the following terms in a lecture delivered just eight months after Tait’s death:

“He […] communicated his results to the Royal Society of Edinburgh and there stated definitely the longest distance to which a golf ball could possibly be driven […] but the champion golfer upset his father's calculations […] by driving a ball five yards further.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 77 , Issue 480 , November 1993 , pp. 298 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Hoerner, S.F. Fluid Dynamic Drag, Private publication, Bricktown N. J., 2nd ed., 1965.Google Scholar
2. Houghton, E.L. and Carruthers, N.B. Aerodynamics for Engineering Students, Arnold, 3rd ed., 1982.Google Scholar
3. Kermode, A.C. Mechanics of Flight, Pitman, 7th ed., 1962.Google Scholar
4. Knott, C.G., Life and Scientific Work of Peter Guthrie Tait, Cambridge, 1911.Google Scholar
5. Low, J.L., Tait, F.G., a Record, 1902.Google Scholar
6. Macfarlane, A., Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century, Wiley, New York, 1919.Google Scholar
7. Streeter, V.L. Fluid Mechanics, McGraw-Hill, 4th Ed., 1966.Google Scholar
8. Tait, P.G. Scientific Papers, Cambridge, 1898–1900.Google Scholar