View from the North 40: Paradoxically, it makes sense

Some things in life just make sense - maybe not at first, but eventually you know enough or you stumble into some information or you just get lucky, like the half-finished puzzle, which you've been struggling to assemble without the picture, and all its loose pieces fall onto the floor in such a manner that the puzzle is completely assembled. Ta-dah! And you look at the assembled puzzle image like, "Oh, yeah. Huh. That makes sense."

(As a side note, yes, I understand that this is a weak analogy because in reality we'd all be yelling, "Holy schnikies! Did you see that? Were you recording?" But I'm sticking with it because you see the puzzle and you "get the picture." Right? It's a little simplistic, yes, but I'm nothing if not simple.)

When I took up archery a couple years ago I fielded a lot of questions about starting a kind of obscure new hobby. Luckily, there was a COVID pandemic and lots of people were getting into hobbies, so the pleasant inquiries always took a little time before they got awkward and weird.

Everyone was excited and interested by the archery, but interest started plummeting as the details came out. Not going to hunt. Or compete. I just always thought archery was cool and have wanted to try horseback archery for years.

You could see the wheels spinning. "Horseback archery?" Yep. And I met someone who competes at it who helped me get the right equipment. "So you are going to compete at this?" Naw, I just want to do it, train my horse for it.

That's when it really sinks in that I want to ride around like a gray-haired 12-year-old shooting stuff with arrows. Some people find the oddness of that goal to be off-putting.

You can see it in their eyes.

But even the archers who are still with me drop off when I tell them I'm shooting a traditional bow, like I just told them I'm driving a refurbished Ford Pinto.

What's wrong with a traditional bow, you might ask. Aiming. Which is kind of crucial when trying to hit a target. Even I've figured that out.

A bow is, let's say, 1-1/2 inches wide at the handhold, so the string which goes straight down the bow is three-quarters of an inch offset from the edge of the bow. So you nock the arrow to the string and the arrow is laying against the side of the bow, but it's pointed all catty-wampus to the side because of that three-quarters of an inch. Sure the angle gets better when you draw the string back, but the arrow is still clearly poised to go flying into the hinterlands. And there are no fancy sights or range finders to help you narrow down your target like a sniper.

Just take your best guess and let fly.

Modern bows have the tech-stuff and they have a kind of notch taken out of the bow so the arrow flies straight from the string through the center of the bow. But where's the fun in that.

There's a thing call the archer's paradox. The paradox - the self-contradiction - centers around that difference in the angle at which the arrow is cockeyed from when it's just sitting nocked and when the arrow is drawn, as you can see in the rudimentary illustration provided.

The thing that didn't add up physics-wise is that it would seem that, when the arrow is released and the string got closer to the bow, the arrow would shoot out at the angle it was at when all was at rest. But no. It flies to where it's pointed when it's only mildly cockeyed while fully drawn. How curious, right?

Apparently the answer to the paradox - the conundrum - is that the arrow, under the force of the released string, bends inward and as it continues forward the bend recoils and bends around the bow toward the place at which it was pointed when fully drawn. And then it continues to flex back and forth through the air until it hits the target.

Boom. Science and slow-motion videography made everything clear. Pieced the puzzle together, if I might, oh so cleverly, describe it.

But what I got out of that was "Traditional bows are involved in a paradox? Oh, yeah. Huh. That makes sense why I like them."

I'm all about things that don't make sense and cause a struggle to understand. If I get to take the easy road, I'll take a turn and head off cockeyed into the hinterlands, like a pointy-headed arrow wobbling through the air.

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Life is puzzling at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .