Ted Patrick - Demos & MAX @ Adobe Systems
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Rubber Band Shooting 101
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Published
Friday, May 06, 2005
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5:19 AM
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In high school I worked summers at an engineering firm in Austin, TX. Given the high number of rubber bands in the office for blueprints, there were lots of rubber band wars. Here is the secret to shooting a rubber band well.&The key to shooting a rubber band well is unequal tension when it is fired. That sounds strange and counterintuitive but trust me, you will be able to shoot a rubber band 20ft and hit exactly what you want with practice.
Flash Video Training - Rubber Band Shooting 101
In the video, one side of the rubber band has more tension than the other. When released this forces the rubber band to rotate as it moves toward its target. The rotation lowers the drag and generally makes the band more aerodynamic. The rubber band will go almost 3x as far with a much higher level of accuracy.
It takes some practice to get the technique down, but in time you will be a jedi master of rubber band shooting in your office. Just make sure you use good rubber bands, the cheap ones will break and backfire using this technique.
Let the battle begin.
Happy Friday,
Ted ;)
6 Responses to “Rubber Band Shooting 101”
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Whoever it was at MM that invented FLV, can rest easy tonight, knowing that the format has now fulfilled it's lifelong reason for being!
If you think of two stretched arms of the elastic band as two separate springs (with lengths adding to a constant) with uneven stretching, then (thinking about Hookes law) it shouldn't make any difference to the force converted into motion, and distance travelled.
But what could be important is the lost energy as the two springs pull on each other, during the time that the elastic band propels itself forward, pulling on the 'pointing' finger. I think that the uneven case, wastes less energy. Anyone agree?
I figured this out a while ago with a few rubber band guns i have. it makes them really accurate, and i built a sniper rifle that can hit a soda can from 40+ feet!
This is awsome. Time to kill my little brother.
To Daniel Freeman:
By that reasoning, a rifle bullet should travel no further than a musket ball of the same weight and fired with the same amount of powder. Your thinking leaves out one crucial element...SPIN!
When you stretch one side of the rubber band loop more than the other side, the rubber band spins as it flys mimicing the effect achieved by a rifled bullet or a well-thrown football. It makes it more stable in flight, conserves momentum, and makes the shot much more accurate, especially with thin rubber bands.
With thicker rubber bands such as those used by the USPS for bundling envelopes, sometimes the spinning rubber bands catch on the air and pull themselves to one side toward the end of the shot as their forward momentum finally wears off. If you could arrange a rubber band fight on the moon, however, that problem would go away. However, if you can learn to predict this "hook", you can sometimes use it to hit people hiding behind objects.
The man who convinced me of the effectiveness of unequal tension did so by shooting me in the lip at a good 15 - 20 feet...and drawing BLOOD! I was most impressed.
Since then, I have become a master of the technique. Believe me, your shots will fly much further and straighter with this "rifling" in place.
I have knolage of rubber band shooting and what you wrote is very good but did you take into factor the four points?
1. Air density
2. Weight of the rubber band
3. Air resistance
4. Strength of the rubber band