Undergrad Problems with Blum's Karate Article

[makamo66]

I have a couple of concerns with Haywood Blum's article "Physics and the art of kicking and punching." First of all, Blum considers a beam with a couple applied to the ends of the bar when he should be considering some kind of mass impacting the bar in the center and second of all, why does he use a beam and not a flat plate? Also, he doesn't take into consideration that wood is orthotropic and simply uses the formulas for an isotropic material. Unfortunately I couldn't find a free PDF of this article online any more but I was able to download the PDF at some time before.

 

[jedishrfu]

I searched for a free online resource, and sadly, there is none to review. This makes commenting on it somewhat challenging.

I found an article on the art of punching, but it doesn't cover actually striking a target. However, it may be of interest for other topics:

https://www.thescienceofstriking.com/training/the-biomechanics-of-a-knockout-punch/