By Drew Courtright and Tate Rogers

        The goal of our experiment was to capture the indentation of a golf ball when being struck by a golf club and also to find the velocity of the ball off the clubface. To capture this high speed event, we used a laser and photon sensor as a photo gate. This triggered the flashes when the clubface broke the laser plane. We used two flashes, one immediate and one on a short delay, for a double exposure. The double exposure captured the ball in contact with the club and approximately 10 cm away. We used the Tracker program to find velocity in the high speed video. Also, we used a rotating fan and the formula velocity = distance / time to determine the velocity in the still pictures. After many attempts, we were able to successfully capture Tate hitting the ball at a speed of almost 150 mph in still photo as well as on a high speed video.

May-June 2007

High Speed Imaging

The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics