Is This a Real Golf Ball Hitting a Steel Plate?

while golf balls DO change shape when struck, I hiiiighly doubt it would deform THAT much....

and if anyone thinks this is real, cut open a golf ball sometime....

I have serious doubts about that. Even at such a high speed, I don't think the ball would act in such a "liquid" fashion. I think it's more likely that the ball would explode.

No, the paint would be chipping and flying off, the outer shell would probably have shattered and it most certainly wouldn't continue acting like a water balloon after the initial impact. I call fake.

The molecular structure of a golf ball would most certainly prohibit the occurrence of the physical deformation shown in this motion graphic presentation.

To put it another way: FAKE! FAKE! FAKE!

It's a well done 3D animation.

I have no doubt it would deform hitting a solid steel wall at that speed but the way the force wave goes back and forth doesn't look right considering the solid core. Fake

It is fake, there is actually a journal paper on golf ball deformation: http://www.springerlink.com/content/936p5m7481450164/

Also here's a pressure test on a golfball:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk_rZI9tOFc&feature=related

Does anyone recognize the "cricket" logo in the UR corner? Can you associate it with any type of programming, CG, marketing, sports???

I highly doubt a golf ball would 'smoosh' like that. They're made of plastic and cork (and other substances I' too lazy to google.) Those things are built to take a lot of abuse without damage. I suspect it's a rubber ball.

Needs Mythbusters!!!

Photoshopped.

the 'photoshopping' thing is a meme

According to some quick research, Tiger's swing launches a golf ball at 170mph. So using that as a reference, it would be a little odd for a golf ball to deform so much at a lower speed. If the ball deformed like that with the force that Tiger hits with, the aerodynamic properties of the ball would be rendered useless. The dimples on a golf ball are for the sole purpose of aerodynamics.

So...I won't go so far as to call it fake. What I will say is that at best, it is mis-titled. That cannot be a golf ball doing 150mph.

Modern golf balls are two pieces, a inner pre-compressed hard rubber core (polybutadiene) and a flexible yet tough plastic (ionomer resin) covering (which is basically injection molded on top of the core).

And hitting a unmovable object at 150mph is NOT the same as being hit by a driver going 120+mph (since in the latter, the ball is free to travel in the opposite direction).

I lean towards real.

Well, if Tiger can hit it at 170 mph, what incentive would the makers of this video have to fake what it looks like at 170 mph?

As a materials scientist, I have to point out that a golf ball would not explode at 150 mph under normal atmospheric conditions, as suspected by a few early commenters.

I vote plausible.

I think it is real. Have MYTHBUSTERS check it out!

I think it is real. Have MYTHBUSTERS check it out!
Look at the flex of the steel plate.

@vonskippy

It doesn't matter which one is stationary and which one is moving. In both cases, the ball is free to travel in the opposite direction.

Thinking back to physics momentum equations (I think this is right...)

Force x time(delta) = mass x velocity

If we assume the length of impact (time) is the same in both cases and the velocities are roughly equal. The force applied to the ball is proportional to the mass of the moving object. I'd assume that a driver has more mass than a golf ball. So, in reality, a driver swung Tiger should deform the ball more than a ball hitting a stationary wall.

http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/5/new-golf-ball-4000fps-slow-motion-726850.html

i call fake.

I did a quick calculation though:
It takes about 20 frames for a ball radius to travel across the screen. If ball radius = 2.35cm (.0235m) then at 70,000 frames per second would put this ball at about 82 m/s which is approximately 180 mph.

This is super rough and the ball diameter information I found varies quite a bit. If anything it seems that the speed in the description is ballpark accurate.

The score so far...

"real" = 3
"doubt" = 5
"fake" = 6
other = 2

I don't have a definitive answer, but I suspect with enough digging and Googling, one could be found...

It is surprising how much objects can compress. Harold Edgerton, the person who pioneered high speed photography has some interesting examples of compressed objects getting hit hard (all shot with high speed cameras in the pre-digital age)

http://tinyurl.com/3y572oe

http://tinyurl.com/3xanr6j

It's real.

i want to believe..

Real.
For evidence, watch some other high speed collisions of objects you think are solid. Watch lead bullets liquify on iron plates, or arrows bend to perpendicular when loosed from a bow.

I've seen slo-mo shots of golf balls coming off driver faces (commonly titanium for those curious) and NONE of them ever deformed like that.

@Colt Seaver

Have you actualy seen the bullet after the impact? Bounce back to it's original shape... it does not.

It's a cool vidjo, but I seriously doubt if it's real. I'm not exactly a physics nut, but I wonder if the speed of the deformation makes any difference? If it doesn't, then you should be able to put a golf ball in a very powerful vice, squash it down to about 5mm thickness, release the vice and watch the golf ball bounce back to it's original shape. That seems rather unlikely to happen. You'd just end up with a small white hockey puck with dimples :=]

I wonder if it's actually a golfball... Perhaps its not photoshopped but rather a gel-like substance that holds the shape of a golfball and is colored to look like one, yet it is not. Just like some 5$ gel-filled squish toy at most museum gift shops...only dressed up like a golfball

I've taken apart quite a few golf balls back in my childhood. They were made of rather stiff vinyl on the outside, rubber bands made up most of the inside, and the center was a liquid-filled rubber ball. Have they changed that much since then?

There are softer and harder balls available depending on a golfer's preference. Looking at other slo-mo impacts from golf irons, there is quite a bit of distortion.

Shot out of an air-gun at super high speed against a steel plate? It's looking more and more plausible, the more I research it.

Yay! No flames!

Its not a golf ball, maybe a soft practice ball or maybe a squishy toy...

@ Colt Seaver:
you cant compare it to a bullet liquifying because they go a little faster than 150mph....

look at the other slo mo videos of golf balls being hit by drivers. theres also videos of golf balls being squashed by a pile driver. eg:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk_rZI9tOFc

I say compare with the other videos on youtube, alot of slow motion driver hits. Seems like theres a lot less deformation... but there is some. So I dunno I'd like to say fake but I'll go plausible for now.

Ah nvm, after seeing that video of the pile driver I have to say false as well.

Get your broom . . . I call shenanigans.

fake and gay

Or at least.....misleading and bisexual.

Did the ball die?

After going through a lot of other YouTube golf ball impact videos, I think this is real, BUT this isn't your typical mens' tournament golf ball where hard distance balls rule. It's probably one marketed for maximum control and is almost certainly a softer ladies' golf ball at that.

I like the way comments started out as 'fake', moved into 'real', and then descended into a cacophony of random opinions from all camps.

FWIW, I think it's real, but I'll not cry if somebody proves otherwise. :)

I think it is definitely the internet.

It's fake you nobs. Either it is a computer animation or some kind of jelly ball like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8gxND1kX6k

Looks real to me.

Quite interesting post, making us find even more interesting websites :
http://www.golfballtest.org/?cat=1

I say it's a real squash ball, with dimples and painted in white.

its obviously real but i'm not sure i buy that it's a normal golf ball...maybe some kind of practice ball that deforms more because it's softer?

Total and absolute bullshit!!!

The ball doesn't fall. It comes back horizontaly after the hit.

Fake.

I'm not a materials engineer but have studied the basics and feel fairly certain the the plastic used in the shell of the golf ball will experience 'plastic' deformation -- ie the material will not return to it's original shape after it's deformed. I'm also of the opinion that the plastic would be quite brittle and would fail before changing shape that much.

The ball above is not a normal golfball.This is a normal golfball:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUzr-4W3imw&feature=fvw

If it is real, I would say it is ladies ball or a balata. It doesn't take a whole round of golf deform a balata, and that is hitting at amateur speeds. Balatas have a very soft outer covering and made to absorb the impact (more control when hitting the green).

@Minnesotastan (8.)

I believe the 'cricket' logo is from one of the BBC digital channels - one would push the red button on their remote control to go to whatever match is playing at the time.

In other words, the video looks like it was ripped from a television broadcast. I realise that it doesn't help towards validating the video but it might trigger someone's memory of its context?

If AbekasakaSB's observation is correct, and this was shown on a British sports channel, than I would bet that it was part of a commercial for a "real" golf ball.

And as the cross-sections at the link in Christophe's comment show, there are golf balls with a structure that might be compressible to this degree.

Perhaps it's "real" but not "regulation" - one of the variants that Nate Greene suggests.

Definitive documentation/sourcing still pending...

Look at this video:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/912495/slow_motion_baseball_hit/

It's not conclusive, but I would say that a baseball feels more rigid than than a golf ball. Yet, you still see the same deformation; though, to a smaller degree, which is expected.

I can't authenticate this without further information, but it doesn't seem unreasonable..

Remember that most hackers and duffers use the common two-piece golf balls (some are multi-layered) but they are very hard and don't spin much, giving more control to the golfer. A balata ball is a rubber band wound core, surrounded by a balata cover. Balata is a natural rubber like substance. These balls are very springy and produce a lot of spin when hit and stop faster on greens. If you hit them wrong (blade them) they'll break and they're expensive so you don't see many of them. This video could very well be a balata ball.

Look @Nate Greene too, he's right about balatas deforming.

I once cut a balata ball open with a hacksaw, I got about 1/4 inch in and the thing basically exploded. Rubber pieces everywhere.

Just as it's obviously not a golf ball (they crack if crushed in a vise), it's OBVIOUSLY not CGI.

I wanted it to be real. but was sure withing seconds it's some kind of novelty soft rubber ball or prank golf ball or something of the sort.

D U H !

@Minnesotastan There are no commercials on the BBC.

It's real. The BBC did a show called "Invisible Worlds" and did a lot of extreme slo-mo stuff like this.

If that was shown on the BBC, that could explain the 150 mph confusion. Maybe it was 150 km/h.

I'm amused people think that this is some sort of vote.

It's probably real. Things happen at ultra-high speeds that are counterintuitive - like the compression waves you see in this video. Someone noted a golfball will crack in a vise - and it will - but the situation is not the same, in that the vise is steady-state, while the golfball in the video is free to oscillate and turn that energy back into kinetic motion.

The way to confirm reality would be to simply reproduce the video; the one attempt I saw above still wasn't nearly fast enough to show anything. Calling the Mythbusters!

@Neil C

You obviously never put a balata golf ball in a vice, it deforms, it's made of rubber.

I think it's real.

This is not a golf ball.

Actually, that clip is FROM and episode of Mythbusters. Unless they are trying to mess with us, it's a real golf ball.

I might be wrong about the specific episode, but I'm pretty sure it's from the recently aired "Mythssion Contol."

There is no question that golf balls are elastic, they are after all designed to withstand high impacts.

Here is a paper on the topic: http://www.springerlink.com/content/936p5m7481450164/fulltext.pdf

The photos are of a golf ball hitting a steel plate at 136 mph, and the ball compresses although not nearly as much as on the video, or in the same jelly-like fashion.

My guess is that the video is real footage of an elastic golf ball, run through some digital processing to enhance the effect. Or it may be entirely genuine, but of a golf ball hitting a steel plate at a much higher speed than 150mph.

When I first saw the video I thought it must be faked - I've cut open a few golf balls and smushed some in a vice for giggles and they seem quite brittle. But the more I read the more I remembered that actually makes me think this is real. Travelling at such speeds would probably cause a significant enough increase in the temperature of the golf ball to change the properties of it's composite materials, hot plastics having a tendancy to be much more supple than their cold selves.
I'm pretty sure @xanderkale is correct saying it's from Invisible Worlds. That show included some incredible pictures of things not seen before because the high-speed cameras used were the very latest developments in camera technology.
And @sfraz, we use Imperial measurements in here in the UK unlike the rest of Europe, so it would be mph and not k/ph.

Hey Biggles,

Thanks for answering my question- I'm now not entirely convinced that it's shopped :=]

Can anyone provide any other examples of any other footage recorded at 70,000 fps?

I vote real.

A couple things to keep in mind when comparing this to a highspeed capture of a golf swing.

First, the club is moving towards the ball and both will continue in the same direction. Here, the ball is moving towards an object that doesn't move so the energy has to reflect back through the ball.

Second, a golf club deforms as well as the ball in contact, here the steel doesn't, so the ball is absorbing most of the energy.

Third, even though a golf ball from Tiger achieves speeds in the 170 mph range, the club is only moving at about 120 mph (still very impressive speed).

All that being said, hard to say if it is real or not. I'd tend to believe it is, but could wouldn't bet the farm on it.

I've seen golf trick shot artists drive a ball through plywood and the hole in the plywood afterwards is way smaller than the diameter of a gold ball so I believe ther is considerable deformity at or just after impact.

Tiger Woods club speed is NOT 170. He is tied for 10th for the highest speeds. The 3 fastest are...

Bubba Watson: 122.81 mph
Dustin Johnson: 121.74
J.B. Holmes: 121.34

Tiger Woods, is tied for 10th at 118.84. Bubba Watson's 122.81 mph clubhead speed turns into an average ball speed of 181.28 mph. The highest he's been measured at is 188.19.

Dustin Johnson's average ball speed is 180.01, and J.B. Holmes' is 179.53. (Tiger: tied for 20th at 173.33.)

The title of this says animated. Such fail on so many blogs.