Want to Hit the Target? Cast It Slow and Steady
If you’ve ever thrown a ball or dart, you may have noticed that the harder you throw it, the more often you miss the target. Well, new research suggests that your accuracy is actually directly affected by your throwing speed, and it’s physics to blame.
The study, led by Yale’s Madhusudhan Venkadesan and Harvard’s Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, and published in the latest issue of the Royal Society Open Science , used athlete data and mathematical modeling to better understand the physics behind projectile throwing. Initially, the researchers thought that the low accuracy with a quick throw was due to the fact that human hands could not release the projectile at the right time. After all, early or late release has a big impact on the trajectory of the projectile.
But this new information also indicates the overall speed of the projectile, which can actually affect the trajectory no matter how accurate your target is. Basically, even if you fire the projectile at exactly the right time, throwing too fast makes you much less accurate than throwing it slowly.
So, if you’re going to throw something where accuracy is more important than speed – like darts, basketball, tossing a bean bag, beer pong (beirut), etc. – the researchers strongly recommend doing it as gently as possible. Throw darts at the dart board with slow, leisurely strokes. The darts only need to fly fast enough to get stuck in the board. Take your time, if you can, when lining up shots during basketball games – there is a reason why free throw rates are so high. In fact, according to the researchers, the most accurate method is bottom free throws, or grandma style. And when you’re about to throw crumpled paper into the trash can in your office, take your time if you want to impress the person you’re talking to. Slowly and surely not always winning the race, but it will hit the mark.