Hollywood often portrays bows as extremely lethal. In reality,however, they were being replaced by firearms on the battlefieldsof Europe already towards the end of the 100 years’ war(1337-1453). While all early projectile weapons were veryinaccurate (sights are a recent invention), the most strikingdifference between the bow and the musket lies in the kineticenergy carried by the projectile. A well trained archer using thefamous British Longbow could fire an arrow of about 100 grams (0.1kg) with an initial energy of approximately 100 J.
QUESTION 1: Compare this to a black-powder musket and a modernrifle. Flintlock muskets typically fired a 30 gram projectile withan initial velocity of 200-300 m/s, whereas a modern US M4 carbinefires a 4 gram bullet at 910 m/s.
QUESTION 2: What would the recoil momentum be for all threeweapons?
QUESTION 3: If we assume that the longbow stores energy like aspring, what would the spring constant k be? For simplicity, assumethat the displacement is equal to the length of the arrow, whichwas about 30 inches (0.76 m).
QUESTION 4: In movies and works of fiction skilled archers aresometimes portrayed releasing multiple arrows at the same time. Areal archer would, however, never do this. Why?
