Posted on 10/15/2015 5:21:55 AM PDT by JoeProBono
TOKYO, A Japanese swordsman dubbed a modern-day samurai sliced a 100 mph fastball in half 30 feet away from where it was launched by a pitching machine.
Isao Machii, who previously made headlines when he dueled a sword-wielding robot and sliced a shrimp traveling 80 mph through the air, drew his sword after the ball was fired from the pitching machine and sliced it in half in midair.
Video of the stunt, posted to YouTube by Oricon News, shows the ball was clocked at 100 mph in the air and was fired from a machine 30 feet away from where Machii was standing.
The video closes in on some of the remains of the baseball, which appears to have been sliced almost exactly in half.
That reminds me of Freepers who think Journey is so much more relative than Led Zeppelin in rock history
Jerry could probably put 6 rounds in the ball before it got to him. :^)
“Just watched it in full screen. The ball is coming from his left, and he swings the sword in an arc to his right. That tells me he’s cutting in the same direction the ball is traveling.”
Your observation makes me even more uncertain if we are watching the same video.
In the one I see, shown at the top of this thread, his right side is mostly, but not directly, presented toward the machine that is firing the ball. A line from big toe to big toe of his feet, when the ball is pitched, is oriented about 20 degrees to the right of pointing at the hole the ball comes through. The center line on the platform that he is standing on is pointed directly at the hole the ball comes through. The point of the sword is a bit closer to the source of the ball than the handle when it impacts the ball.
The sheathed sword is on his left side, away from the ball pitcher. The ball comes at him from the his right, though his upper torso is twisted a bit so that his head is looking directly at the hole where the ball comes through. He draws the sword and swings it toward the ball pitcher, cutting the ball, and pivoting his left foot clockwise, from left to right as he completes the stroke.
Is that different from what you see?
I have been thinking about it from a perspective aspect.
The camera is to the left/rear of the swordsman. We are seeing a flat image, not three dimensional.
What appears to be movement from the left to the right is the left to right vector component of the balls trajectory when viewed from the camera position.
When viewed from the the swordsman’s position, the ball is coming nearly directly at him, passing in front of him, from right to left. Notice that his feet do not shift until after the ball has been cut. Post 8 in this thread shows the action in alternating real time and slow motion. The slow motion shows what I have described very clearly.
Lol! it really doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things.
Glad you enjoyed it! It was bugging me that you were seeing things so much differently, so I was attempting to figure out why.
“If the ball was moving at 100 mph as it passed him, he would have to swing at at least 101 mph to “catch up” to it. But a blade moving that slowly would not be able to slice through the ball.”
Huh? No way man. He only has to move fast enough to get the sword in the way of the ball. A pedestrian does not have to run 56 miles per hour to get hit by a car. They only have to step off the sidewalk. He would only have to go faster if he was swinging from behind the ball... sort of like the pitcher standing behind a batter and the batter swinging to ‘catch up’ to the ball. But that is not how this worked. Instead it was more like a bunt. He drew his sword and swung it in the way of the ball and the ball cut itself by flying though the blade. He started is draw when the ball shot out. He moved his sword only about 45 inches and the ball flew several yards. Rough estimate indicates the blade was moving at least a couple times slower than the ball.
But what do I know, my physics education only extends to a degree in mechanical engineering.
How many others came to this thread expecting to see John Belushi?
I’ve got a minor in physics too, so the concept isn’t exactly lost on me. What I saw was that the swordsman swung WITH the ball’s flight, not AGAINST it. However, there seems to be some doubt as to whether my eyes are deceiving me. Obviously, if he swung INTO the flight of the ball, your analysis is right. But if not, mine is.
He is just hitting the ball with very sharp bat pitched into the strike zone.
It might be a different story if The Cuban Missile or The Ryan Express was trying to hit you in the chest with a 100 mph fastball.
He has videos of chopping BB’s too.
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