Okay, I admit I was kind of creeping on some of the physics kids outside at lunch today. Why? Oh, for the simple reason that they are using whips for their physics fair project, and they were learning how to use them today. One of our teachers was showing them how, because she used to work at a Renaissance Festival.
I got a lesson on how to do it. And it was awesome.
Okay, my technique was rather off at first, so I kind of whipped my hair (not back and forth) in the back, but whatever. I eventually got the hang of it, which felt really cool.
Apparently, the whip is less of a muscle weapon and more of a movement sort of weapon. With things like swords, you have to put some grunt behind an overhand if you want to do any real damage (and if you want to move the sword at all, in some cases), but with whips, you just have to get your arm movement right, and then people with very little arm muscle can knock someone over from six or eight feet away. And trip them up. And stuff.
Apparently, tripping people up is really easy because the whip is designed to wrap around stuff it gets flung at. Our teacher demonstrated (gently) on one of the people there. Even though the impulse in her arm was very light, and she was using an eight-foot whip, and it still went around the kid's legs a few times. If he had been running from her, he probably would have been tripped up and done a faceplant.
Anyhow, that cracking that occurs when a whip is at its full extent is a breaking of the sound barrier because the thin, whippy end of the whip is moving so fast.
Anyhow, it felt REALLY cool to learn how to use a whip. Definitely writing that into something one of these days.
And I'm probably ready to just quit school and become Indiana Jones.
If that were legal.
