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Ever wonder what goes into the HEMA community’s favorite term to describe their favorite sword?

You see the title.

There have been a number of very good physics descriptions of sword motion. However they neglect the most important part: a sword isn’t free floating in space!

Dagger tournaments can receive an unfair reputation as stab-happy fights, with competitors disregarding defense for a ‘first-strike at all costs’ mentality. This paper will determine what proportion of exchanges in a recent dagger and ringen HEMA tournament ended with clean, contained hits and how many ended in doubles or hits with insufficient control

Longswords are often treated as having static vibrational nodes, with implications for sparring. A combination of mathematical analysis, SolidWorks modeling, and practical experiments were used to analyze the motion of a longsword under realistic end conditions. It was determined that not only are the nodes not static with respect to different end conditions, they also vary over time during free vibration after an impulse. Due to the complexity of the vibrations, as well as the very specific design criteria of a sword, it is impractical to attempt to alter the sword to maintain specific node locations. Vibration damping gloves are suggested as a possible remedy to fatigue during sparring.

Due to popular* demand, SwordSTEM Polos are finally here!Enjoy a nice performance polo and support SwordSTEM at the same time. https://southcoastswords.com/products/sword-stem-sport-polo *as popular as anything […]

Does Meyer depict cutting with the hand on the pommel? Come and learn. (Or don’t read and post a response anyways.)

And so we come to the end of year number two for Sword STEM.

In some tournament formats a competitor will be given a win and the maximum match points if their opponent doesn’t fight. This is a terrible idea and unfair to all the other competitors.

You can tell when a sword lands flat. With MATH!