Thearos wrote on Nov 18^th, 2013 at 6:06am:


I agree too.

Marauder: You are very often talking about "maximal energy". Please consider that in the formula there are two variables: Mass and velocity. You don't have to increase the speed if you increase the weight.
For me it's much easier to increase the weight of my stones than the speed I'm doing my movements with. Timing is less of a question and I can maintain a similar accuracy. Maximizing speed (= maximizing distance) doesn't play a big role as you will hunt on distances as close as possible. Further the "lobbed" throw will be (more) silent.

For many people what messes up the accuracy when they "whang" is, that they are "forcing" their throw or that they make their movements faster than they can control it. Jaegoor told me this the first time and I experienced this many times with myself and while teaching slinging to other people. So if you "take back" your force, you will do your movements at a speed that you can control. Not the energy you put into your throw is the problem. It is the speed or the timing of your movements.

If their technique is fine, they can then put their full power in a heavy stone, which will fly slow and make a high arc but carry a devastating force and hit accurately.

One last physical and also more theoretical point: The velocity is squared in the expression of the kinetic energy. Therefore if you can't manage your shots at full power and have to slow your movements a bit, it is better to take heavy stones and therefore do slower movements as the impact on the "total energy" will be smaller of this decrease of movement velocity.

K=1/2mxv squared

when you plug the numbers in to this basic formula you will notice that velocity plays a much bigger role in producing energy than mass.

mass contributes by a coefficient of 1/2
while velocity contributes by its square.

What I am trying to say is, that when you are "lobbing" at a somewhat constant velocity increasing the weight of your projectile even by double is not actually producing that much more power. actually you are probably producing a lot less power using the bigger stone, as the bigger stone is probably travailing at a lower velocity.

In end. increasing the weight of the projectile without increasing the velocity, does not give you much if any(depending on whether the shot slowed down do to increasing the weight) extra Kinetic energy/destructive power. 

quote Teg,
"One last physical and also more theoretical point: The velocity is squared in the expression of the kinetic energy. Therefore if you can't manage your shots at full power and have to slow your movements a bit, it is better to take heavy stones and therefore do slower movements as the impact on the "total energy" will be smaller of this decrease of movement velocity"

In my opinion, with respect. It is bad practice to limit the weapons potential based on not being able to control the power that is potentially being produced. learn to master the faster movements/ reflexes it takes to control powerful shots.