Whipcracking
Encyclopedia
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
through the use of a whip
Whip
A whip is a tool traditionally used by humans to exert control over animals or other people, through pain compliance or fear of pain, although in some activities whips can be used without use of pain, such as an additional pressure aid in dressage...
. Originating during mustering and horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
driving/riding, it has become an art of its own. A rhythmic whipcracking belongs to the traditional culture among various Germanic peoples
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.Originating about 1800 BCE from the Corded Ware Culture on the North...
of Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
(Goaßlschnalzen), various Alpine areas (Aperschnalzen), Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, and Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
(Ostorozás). Today it is performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
, a part of rodeo
Rodeo
Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...
shows in United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, a competitive sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and increasingly popular in the United Kingdom, where it crosses boundaries of sport, hobby and performance.
Physics
Speed of sound
The speed of sound is the distance travelled during a unit of time by a sound wave propagating through an elastic medium. In dry air at , the speed of sound is . This is , or about one kilometer in three seconds or approximately one mile in five seconds....
creating a small sonic boom
Sonic boom
A sonic boom is the sound associated with the shock waves created by an object traveling through the air faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding much like an explosion...
. The creation of the sonic boom was confirmed by high-speed shadow photography in 1927.
There are at least three "modes of motion" that can produce the necessary speed in a whip to cause it to crack. The three are: a half wave, a full wave and a loop. These names are indicative of the shape of the bends in the whip as it is thrown. In all three, the initial motion is applied to the handle, and the resultant shape moves down the whip's body to the tip.
The high speed of the tip is explained by the law of the conservation of momentum.
Since momentum
Momentum
In classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object...
is a vector
Vector
Vector, a Latin word meaning "carrier", may refer in English to:-In computer science:*A one-dimensional array**Vector , a data type in the C++ Standard Template Library...
, it has a direction, and does not pass through any bend that reverses the direction of movement in the body of the whip − such as the one that occurs when a half wave shape moves down a whip.
When a whip is thrown, the initial motion of the handle adds some amount of kinetic energy to the body of the whip. If the whip is going to crack, the handle movement must also produce one of the modes of motion that create a reversal of direction in the whip's movement. As the reversal of direction moves down the whip, the momentum and the kinetic energy in the whip, are concentrated in the segment of the whip between the tip and the moving bend. As the bend approaches the tip, the mass of the moving part approaches zero while the energy remains relatively constant. Since the momentum is the product of the mass and speed of the moving object, the smaller the mass, the higher the speed. Hence the end of the whip moves extremely fast, easily reaching the speed of sound.
Many published popular science
Popular science
Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...
explanations capitalize on the fact that the general shape of a whip is tapered: thick at the handle and very narrow at the tip, hence the decrease of the mass. While tapering does contribute the decreasing mass, it is not a deciding factor. Even "flat" un-tapered whips will crack. The actual decrease of the mass of the moving part occurs simply because the whip ends: the closer the moving bend is to the tip, the less mass is in the part that's moving in the given direction.
Nathan Myhrvold
Nathan Paul Myhrvold , formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures. Myhrvold, usually with coinventors, holds 17 U.S. patents assigned to Microsoft and has applied for more than 500 patents. In addition, Myhrvold and coinventors hold 115 U.S...
, a computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, carried out a computer simulation
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...
of an Apatosaurus
Apatosaurus
Apatosaurus , also known by the popular but scientifically deprecated synonym Brontosaurus, is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived from about 154 to 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period . It was one of the largest land animals that ever existed, with an average length of and a...
, which has a very long, tapering tail resembling a whip, and concluded that sauropods were capable of producing a crack comparable to the sound of a cannon
Cannon
A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...
.
Goaßlschnalzen
Goaßlschnalzen, Goaßlschnalzn, Goasslschnoizen is translated as "whip-cracking", from the Bavarian word Goaßl (German: Geißel) for coachwhip. In earlier centuries, the carriageCarriage
A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters and sedan chairs are excluded, since they are wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be light,...
drivers used elaborate crack sequences to signal their approach and to identify them. Over time horse-drawn transport dwindled, but the tradition remained, and coaches practiced their skill in their spare time.
Today the Goaßlschnalzer ("whipsnappers") do concert
Concert
A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band...
performances, often as bands that include conventional musical instrument
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...
s. Whipsnapping is also a traditional sport in Bavaria. There are many whip-cracking associations in Bavaria.
Aperschnalzen
Aperschnalzn or Aperschnalzen is an old tradition of competitive whipcracking revived in the first half of the 20th century. The word "aper" means "area free of snow", and it has been thought that this tradition had a pagan meaning of "driving the winter away" by whipcracking.British Whipcracking Convention
The British Whipcracking Convention is a place for all who are interested in whip cracking. This ranges from complete novices who have never picked up a whip, through intermediate skills to expert skill sharing. There are workshops for the differing skill levels as well as competitions and targets. The third convention was held in Aldersley Leisure Village, Aldersley Road, WolverhamptonWolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
on 14 July 2007.
Australian sport
In the latter half of the 20th century, attempts to preserve traditional crafts, along with a resurgence of interest in Western performance arts and the release of films such as Raiders of the Lost ArkRaiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise...
(in which the hero, Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...
, uses a bullwhip
Bullwhip
A bullwhip is a single-tailed whip, usually made of braided leather, which was originally used as a tool for working with livestock.Bullwhips are pastoral tools, traditionally used to control livestock in open country...
as a tool), led to an increased interest in whipcracking as a hobby and performance art, as well as a competitive sport. Whip cracking competitions have become especially popular in Australia. They focus on the completion of complex, multiple-cracking routines and precise target work. Various whips, apart from bullwhips, are used in such competitions. The most common whip used in Australian competitions is an Australian stockwhip, a whip unique to Australia.
- Target routines
- target cutting
- object wrapping
- object moving/manipulation
- Cracking routines
- Cracking patterns
- Cracking with two whips
In cracking routines, the judging criteria are the presentation and making audible cracks in prescribed moments.
See also
- BullwhipBullwhipA bullwhip is a single-tailed whip, usually made of braided leather, which was originally used as a tool for working with livestock.Bullwhips are pastoral tools, traditionally used to control livestock in open country...
- Crack the WhipCrack the WhipCrack the Whip is a simple outdoor children's game that involves physical coordination, and is usually played in small groups, either on grass or ice. One player, chosen as the "head" of the whip, runs around in random directions, with subsequent players holding on to the hand of the previous player...
- John BradyJohn Brady (showman)John Brady is an Australian whip cracking expert. He has performed on five continents – in leading shows, fairs and special events – and has appeared in many television shows and films, including Holywood films, as a showman who is both excellent at rope tricks and whip cracking.John Brady performs...
, an expert whipcracker - Fiona (Wilks) Smith, 12 times Australian ladies champion in whipcracking
- StockwhipStockwhipA stockwhip is a type of whip made of a long, tapered length of flexible, plaited leather with a stiff handle that is used when mustering cattle.- Origin and uses of the stockwhip :...
- Whip boxing