English

Left- vs right-handed badminton slice shots: opposite shuttlecock spinning and Magnus effect

Popular Physics 2024-02-01 v2

Abstract

The chiral nature of a badminton shuttlecock is responsible for its anti-clockwise spinning as it naturally propagates through the air. This induces a dissymmetry between left-handed and right-handed players and the resulting trajectories of the shuttlecock, which were captured in real condition on the badminton court and in slow-motion at 3700 fps. The videos clearly evidence this dissymmetry as slice shots performed by righties accelerate the natural anti-clockwise spinning, while the one performed by lefties induces a clockwise to anti-clockwise spinning, making trajectories of shuttlecocks different. The slow-motion videos also caught a brief Magnus effect, often neglected in badminton, lifting up the shuttlecock for both lefties and righties and affecting the effectiveness of the slice shot.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.11155,
  title  = {Left- vs right-handed badminton slice shots: opposite shuttlecock spinning and Magnus effect},
  author = {Eric Collet},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.11155},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Videos are available here: doi 10.5281/zenodo.10012876