Bow Arrow
Bow & Arrow: Potential energy stored in the limb or the cord string?
My son has a science question about forces. The question asks whether the potential energy is stored in the limb or in the cord string of a bow. The teacher said the answer is 'cord string' but my son has played with a bow and arrow once and discovered that the springy part is in the limb. So he wrote 'limb' as the answer. Who is right?
The teacher is....mistaken. The potential energy of the bow is stored in the bow's limbs, not the string. All the string does is deliver that stored energy to the arrow. It is when the bow's limbs straighten out (as much as they are capable) that the stored energy is transferred to the string, and then to the arrow. It doesn't matter whether the bow is a recurve, longbow or compound bow, they all store and deliver their potential energy in the same general manner (the differences being the recurved limb tips of the recurve bow and the 'wheels' of the compound bow making the two design types of bow more efficient than the general longbow design).
Here are two webpages for the teacher to look at:
http://www.stortford-archers.org.uk/medieval.htm
http://sagittarius.student.utwente.nl/artikel/bas/archghh.html
Teacher needs to pay special attention to the section titled "Energy Storage In The Bow" on the first webpage.