"Glad you have such a high opinion of my education, research, and career.  "


Well, don't worry about it Garland. I guess when it comes to golf course architecture you just happened to stumble down the same wrong road Josh Crane did. It's never too late to hang a U turn and at least get back to the intersection where you made the mistake.
 

I was approaching this from a purely physical standpoint.  I had not considered the emotional component of the game, and many of us here tend to judge our satisfaction on the quality of the course we are playing.  There are those who find happiness by playing well.

I've looked up more words in the dictionary for this thread than any previous thread.  Thanks for that.

"Golf shots that begin at point A and finish near point B, where the initial angle the player plays away from point B is significant, tend to give the player great satisfaction."  There's a theory based on experimentation that addresses emotional state.

For those naysayers, we here at GolfClubAtlas.com are on the cutting edge of golf architecture research, developing a framework for architects who follow in our wake.  Soon will come a day when the average golf course will be a Doak 7, as we lift the game to new heights of enjoyment.  Concepts like "It's a Hanse, for crying out loud!" and "It's a Fazio, for crying out loud!" move the art form forward.

I stand by my initial statement that there are theorists and experimentalists here, and our group is blessed with a handful of guys that really enjoy breaking the game down.  It was Paul Cowley's post on the basic shapes of golf holes that prompted the initial post.  As far as taking this seriously, under muffled laughter I proclaim that golf is a game and if there were no golf I'd find something else to do.

Hey, John, what is the possibility that the math used by Newton or Einstein or Hawkings is just flat-ass wrong?
...

For Newton and Einstein, 100% and they knew it.
They knew where it fell down. That is why Hawkings and others are working on string theory, to solve the know failures of Newton and Einstein. It remains to be seen how wrong Hawkings and his fellows will be.

This thread will have achieved a great purpose if it has opened the eyes of those who previously poo poo'd the mysterious aspects of the sport.

Now everybody...

Feelings, whoa whoa whoa feelings....


 

Quote from: paul cowley on December 08, 2007, 06:52:03 AM

Quote from: Philip Young on December 08, 2007, 12:14:27 AM

Pete,

You asked, "Theoretically, could one design and build a golf course on a mobius strip?"

Yes, they could, it just couldn't be called Mobius Hills...

I find this quite interesting as a mobius strip is perfectly suited to be a course with returning nines with the clubhouse in the middle.

Philip, how do you get to the back side?

He must have used a vibrating string.

"However, new methods are developed that bring us closer."

Garland:

Yeah, RIGHT. That's also exactly what Joshua Crane said!

 Fun string (theory).

 I am a theorist when I am not golfing - with plenty of ideas of how golf should be played on what kind of playing fields.

I am an experimentalist when I am golfing - with lots of explosions and complex math to prove it.

The Mobius Strip . . .
 The Mobius Strip

Fun string (theory).

 I am a theorist when I am not golfing - with plenty of ideas of how golf should be played on what kind of playing fields.

I am an experimentalist when I am golfing - with lots of explosions and complex math to prove it.

The Mobius Strip . . .
 The Mobius Strip

....ah ...the mobius strip.

When I first encountered it as a younger person I almost thought it magic.

But now I get to design a golf course on it, one with returning nines...here goes:

Look to the right of the strip and find where it is connected...and lets call this the clubhouse.

Now follow one side around until you return to the clubhouse, but you will be on the opposite side of the strip from where you started....that concludes the front nine.

Now continue along the same side of the strip until you once again return to the clubhouse...and notice that you have returned on the same side of the strip that you started from...that concludes the back nine...and my first routing on a mobius strip...something that would have been hard for me to imagine as a youngster

Well, I'd say it's theoretical.  There are gravitational constraints.  You can't golf upside down.

How did we get here?

TEP,

There is nothing wrong with evalutaing golf from a quantitative standpoint.  At the end of the day, an experienced golfer knows how golf balls react, whether they know the math or not.  It certainly doesn't hurt to understand it, and in the case of golf equipment manufacturers and governing bodies, it is essential information.

The leading questions you pose seem intended to suggest that I'm foolish to be so sure of myself with regards to the nature of things.  I don't even know the shortcomings of Newton's laws.  But in the context of discussing the physics of golf, the mathematics typically used to describe thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, momentum, energy transfer, and the like, work very accurately.  How am I so sure?  Because of a different science, statistics.  After the first trillion tries where there are no exceptions, you can say with a great deal of certainty that it is so.

So you've hit a bit of a sore spot, because science is under siege in this country, for political and religious reasons.  Many scientists have complained their work is being stifled.  I believe this is a big mistake.

The answers to your questions are:

1) No, Newton and Einstein are not flat ass wrong, most of their theories continue to be supported by the data, I have no idea about Hawkings, though I've also heard string world theory may not be relevant
2)  No. Euclid was smart and brave
3)  No. SLAC was not a toy.  They discovered tons of new physics, though it didn't yield any useful applications that I know of, unless you consider the fact they were instrumental in the early days of the Internet.
4)  None.  The laws of Mother Nature will never change.  If they do, I owe you a dollar.

If quantum theory is right, all of us here at GCA are both experimentalists and theorists.  

Of course, quantum theory has never been reconciled with relativity theory.  They contradict each other.

And then there's Goedel, who basically proved it's all hopeless anyway...

1) No, Newton and Einstein are not flat ass wrong, most of their theories continue to be supported by the data, I have no idea about Hawkings, though I've also heard string world theory may not be relevant

This depends on whether you think Tom was asking whether they were universally correct or not. Since he had mentioned the work trying to overcome the lack of universality of their work, I assumed Tom was posing the universality question.

"However, new methods are developed that bring us closer."

Garland:

Yeah, RIGHT. That's also exactly what Joshua Crane said!

You understand that I am not refering to mathematical methods don't you? I know this thread is physics and math, so I am just checking whether you had that misconception since I did not make clear that the new methods were not mathematical.