The Surprising Speed of Badminton Shuttles

While it may come as a surprise to some, the fastest racket sport in the world is not tennis or racquet ball, but badminton. In fact, the numbers are not even close. The top speed for a badminton shot belongs to Malaysian doubles specialist Tan Boon Heong, who hit a smash with his Yonex Nanoray Z-Speed that clocked in at 306.34 miles per hour.

By comparison, the fastest tennis serve ever recorded belongs to Australian Samuel Groth, who managed a 163-mile-per hour service delivery. However, Groth’s world record is somewhat dubious, as it was hit at a challenger event, where speed gun technology is not always reliable. The fastest serve recognized by the Association of Tennis Professionals belongs to American John Isner at 157.21 miles per hour. Sabine Lisicki, meanwhile, holds the record for fastest tennis shot in the women’s game, with a near 131-mile-per hour serve.

It should be noted that Heong’s smash was part of an experiment designed specifically to see how fast a shuttlecock could travel. That said, the top speed of a birdie in match play is still impressive. Denmark’s Mads Pieler Kolding, another doubles specialist, once connected on a 264.7-mile-per-hour smash. In women’s singles competition, the record for fastest smash belongs to Thailand’s Ratchanok Intanon at 231.15 miles per hour.

Other racket sports, and sports in general, simply do not compare when it comes to ball speed. The fastest recorded shot in a ping pong match belongs to Lukasz Budner of Poland, at just over 72 miles per hour, while the fastest pitch by a professional baseball player was delivered by Aroldis Chapman at 105.07 miles per hour. The fastest hit in baseball is slightly higher, with New York Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Staton once driving a ball at 122.2 miles per hour.

To get a sense of how fast a 264- or 306-mile-per-hour smash is traveling, individuals should remember that the average car on an American freeway is traveling at between 65 and 75 miles per hour. Even professional race cars moving at speeds of more than 220 miles per hour lag behind the fastest badminton smashes.

The speeds of modern-day shuttlecocks can be attributed, in part, to the development of synthetic string materials like high-intensity nylon used in racquets. These strings have been designed to minimize stress and injury to player’s arms while providing a powerful, reliable hitting service. In the early days of the sport, strings were made from the stomach linings of animals such as cats and crows.

Surprisingly, shuttlecock innovations have not been as dramatic. All birdies used in official badminton tournaments are made from goose feathers. In fact, feathers are specifically sourced from a goose’s left wing. Taking feathers from the same wing allows manufacturers to better ensure consistent flight patterns, especially while traveling at speeds of several hundred miles per hour. Each birdie features 16 feathers fixed to a cork tip.

Some birdies are made of duck feathers, while others consist of synthetic materials. The Yonex Mavis 350 birdie, for example, is a popular model that utilizes nylon in place of real feathers.

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All about Digital Signal Processing

Digital signal processing involves the creation of algorithms designed to mathematically manipulate and enhance real-world signals such as audio, video, pressure, and temperature. Digital signal processors (DSPs), then, are a form of technology that adds, subtracts, divides, and multiplies in rapid fashion to eliminate high-frequency noise from specific parts of the signal. Manufacturers of modern audio products, such as the Apple AirPods Pro and Amazon Echo speakers, utilize DSPs in their hardware.

DSPs are more effective than analog signal processors, in large part due to the differences in value in the latter’s electrical components. Analog circuits require precision for passive and active elements such as resistors, inductors, amplifiers, and capacitors, but this is impossible to achieve for electrical components, meaning analog circuits have limited accuracy. They also aren’t flexible, so hardware needs to be adjusted in order to make changes to a component’s value. DSPs, meanwhile, even allow the transformation of low-pass filters into high-pass filters via the alteration of programmable coefficients.

For audio playback devices, DSPs perform encoding and decoding functions as well as handling user interface, equalization, and volume control. They can also perform tasks associated with active noise cancellation, voice recognition, and bass adjustment.

To illustrate the concept, consider the process of recording and playing files on an MP3 audio player. Analog audio is input through a source during the recording phase and subsequently converted into a digital signal via an analog-to-digital converter. The DSP then encodes the MP3 and saves the file on the device. During playback, the DSP decodes the file, which is then transformed back into an analog signal and outputted through speakers or headphones.

For audio equipment, DSPs are usually small chips that expedite the aforementioned process. However, they can also take the form of larger multi-channel processors used in professional studio equipment and vehicles. A typical DSP contains program memory and data memory in addition to a compute engine and input/output. The compute engine accesses information from the data and program memory and conducts appropriate math processing to perform the desired function.

Although DSPs are core components of modern audio and video technology, manufacturers do not often list DSP capabilities on the spec sheets of their products. For headphones, DSPs are usually paired with the Bluetooth chip. Other devices typically provide speaker driving, digital-to-analog conversion, analog-to-digital conversion, and DSP capabilities on a single chip.

Professional and amateur programmers alike utilize DSPs to develop their own software or perform tasks such as enhancing performance for headphones and bookshelf speakers. After-market DSP boxes can even be used to calibrate virtual surround-sound systems.

There are two distinct categories of digital signal processing. Fixed-point DSPs manipulate integers of at least 16 bits, meaning they can process as many as 65,536 bit patterns. Floating-point DSPs, meanwhile, manipulate rational numbers of at least 32 bits and function similarly to scientific notation. They can yield more than 4.29 million different bit patterns and are therefore more capable of processing data for computationally intensive applications.

Fixed-point DSPs are usually less expensive to produce than floating-point DSPs and are thus used more frequently. However, floating-point DSPs are preferred among designers developing complex algorithms, as they require less manipulation to make up for quantization noise.

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These Five Golfers Have Won Every Major Championship

The PGA Tour season typically runs from September until the Tour Championship the following August and includes roughly 50 tournaments. While most tournaments carry first-place prizes of more than $1 million, none are considered as prestigious as the four major championships: the Masters Tournament, PGA Championship, U.S. Open, and Open Championship, formerly known as the British Open.

Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Gene Sarazen are the only five golfers in history to win each of the four major championships. Nicklaus and Woods rank first and second, respectively, in all-time major championship victories, while Hogan and Player are tied for fourth with Walter Hagen. Sarazen is tied for seventh all-time with Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, and Harry Vardon.

An 18-time major championship winner, Nicklaus has won the Masters Tournament six times; the PGA Championship five times; the U.S. Open four times; and the British Open three times. He won his first major championship at the 1962 U.S. Open, following a playoff victory over Palmer. At 22 years old, he became the youngest U.S. Open winner since Bobby Jones in 1923.

Nicklaus won the PGA Championship and Masters Tournament the following year and completed the career grand slam with a victory at the 1966 British Open. He won major championships spanning three decades, with his last victory occurring at the Masters Tournament in 1986. Nicklaus also finished as runner-up in 19 major championships and was among the top five finishers in a record 56 majors.

Woods, meanwhile, won his first major championship at the Masters Tournament in 1997 in dominant fashion. He scored the lowest four-round total (270) in tournament history, breaking the record of 271, which was previously shared by Nicklaus (1965) and Ray Floyd (1976). He also became the youngest champion in Masters history at 21 years old and set another 18 tournament records, many of which still stand.

Woods won his first of four PGA Championships in 1999 and completed the career grand slam the following year with victories at the U.S. Open and British Open. He won the 2008 U.S. Open and went 11 years without a major championship victory until winning the Masters for the fifth time in 2019. He now has 15 major championships.

Hogan and Player have each won nine major championships. Walter Hagen, who ranks third in all-time major victories, was never able to win the Masters to complete the career grand slam. Hogan achieved that distinction in 1953 with an especially impressive season: he won the U.S. Open, Masters, and British Open, becoming the first golfer to win at least three major championships in a single year. Player won his first major at the 1959 British Open and completed the career grand slam with a victory at the 1965 U.S. Open.

Sarazen is a seven-time major championship winner whom many credit with creating the sand wedge during the early 1930s. He won the PGA Championship and U.S. Open in 1922, but won only one major (the 1923 PGA Championship) over the next 10 years. Sarazen won the 1932 British Open and completed the grand slam by winning the Masters Tournament in 1935. He was the first golfer to achieve this rare feat.

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