# Kinetic energy and horses!



## travlingypsy (Apr 5, 2008)

My trainer always told us about eneryg and how you can use it to move the horses. And how they are like 50 million times more sensitive to energy then us. 

Then I saw a thing on time warp where this samurai guy used Kinetic energy to drop this guy to the ground, the samurai hardly just touched the other. But in slow mo you didnt see the energy of the hit transfer back to the samurai it just went straight through the one who got hit or basicly touched. 

Does any one els know about using energy to "move" or "control", "train" horses?


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## claireauriga (Jun 24, 2008)

I'm afraid I don't know anything about the techniques you're talking about, but I do know what kinetic energy is.

Kinetic energy is the energy a body possesses by virtue of its motion. The equation you probably learned in school is:










That is, kinetic energy is equal to half the mass times the velocity squared.

When it comes down to it, many forms of energy are fundamentally kinetic energy: heat energy is to do with the disordered movement of particles, sound energy is the movement of a medium that the wave travels through, and so on.

I'm not sure how one would 'use kinetic energy to make the horse move' or anything like that. One can increase the KE of a body by applying a force to it to make it accelerate ...


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## travlingypsy (Apr 5, 2008)

My trainer showed us how to move the horse without having to touch it... 

Like to yelid the front end or hind end, if we want to move the front end we would walk into the horses space and have our own energy more ....

(oh brain fart!) present/exciting/ instead of being calm. If that is making any sence cause I cannot think right now. I guess just send more energy out of your body.???? 

And you dont have to use a flag,carrot stick, lead rope, halter. Just you and your body telling the horse to move away from your space/energy. 
And NOT by waving your hands, yelling,chasing the horse. For example free lunging, yeilding in a round pen.


Ok here is the thing I saw on time warp! This is what I want to learn how to transfer that into a horse to make it move off of your "energy" while ridding instead of actuall kicks,or nudges. If horses are way times more sensitive to it then we are wouldnt it be amazing to see? 

The part where the samurai takes jeff to the ground with just laying a hand on him is near the end. And I would watch it in high quality so you can see the energy not trasfering back to the samurai. 

... So I was wondering if anyone knew how to increase their energy and actually send it to the horse.


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## claireauriga (Jun 24, 2008)

To be honest it sounds like they're not talking at all scientifically when they say 'energy'. It seems to me like they're talking much more about body language, and the different intensities or movements one can use.

It's a personal peeve (alright, full-blown hate) of mine when people use phrases like 'kinetic energy' so inaccurately. It gives people such a distorted view of science and really contributes to people thinking science is 'hard' or 'boring' or 'not for me'. I'm not talking about you here, but whoever came up with the idea to talk about body language in terms of 'kinetic energy'.

If you're waving your hand in the air, then it has kinetic energy. If you're holding it still, then it doesn't.


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## travlingypsy (Apr 5, 2008)

Hey I like science that was the only subject I was good at, I think thats why im so interested in this whole time warp thingy. 

SO, like you cant send energy through your body and to another object? 

Because my mom has done Ikedo martial arts and her Senssi was high up there and he pushed a guy away from him with just using his chest and still not touching the guy. My mom was freaked but she saw it with her own eyes... 


This is all sounding like star wars jedi stuff O_O 

So my trainer is like on crack? Because she told me she learned all this energy stuff through ti chi clinic um through an intructor named James and he uses the ti chi for ridding.


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## claireauriga (Jun 24, 2008)

I don't think tai chi is working with the scientific idea of energy. I'm sure there are ways to control and use your body language and the impulsion and forces your body can produce to do all kinds of wonderful things, but describing them in pseudoscientific terms is just asking for trouble with people like me xD

Basically, I'm sure that the things people do in systems like tai chi to control their body or, in your examples, communicate with your horse, are valid. But they're not using the word 'energy' in any kind of scientific sense.

How can you transfer energy from one body to another? Depends on the type of energy. You can increase an object's kinetic energy by accelerating it and increasing its velocity: if you pushed a 1 kg block hard enough to change its velocity from 1 m/s to 3 m/s its KE would change from 0.5 J to 4.5 J. If you put a spoon into a bowl of hot water, heat energy will transfer from the water to the spoon, raising its temperature.

I have a module at uni called Transport Phenomena. Half of it is all about heat transfer and how you heat things up and cool them down. The other half is all about mass transfer - how you move kinetic energy (and do other kinds of work) on fluids and stuff. If you want to know about heat capacities or enthalpy or momentum transfer ... well, ask me once I've gone over my notes xD



*Edit to add:* I think that these people are using the word 'energy' to make people think about how they are moving their bodies and so on and as an aid in getting the right kind of movement or stance or so on. It's a word they use to help the people visualise what they need to do, rather than a word that scientifically describes what's going on.


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## travlingypsy (Apr 5, 2008)

Hmmm, I understand about the heat and movement of things by what you said. 

I guess im still confused on the whole thing on how that guy just laid a hand on the other and he fell into his chair like someone just knocked him out... 
And what about what my mom saw, I know she didnt lie about it. 

So ok, you can NOT minipulate something with out touching it, by using the energy around us. Correct?


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## claireauriga (Jun 24, 2008)

Um, energy isn't a thing that one can bundle up and use to knock people down. Energy won't knock someone over - a force will. So if there's some way to exert a force on the person without actual hand-to-person contact - which I concede may be quite possible - then that's what they're doing. They're not shooting a ball of 'energy' at them.

Or, alternatively, they may be using their body language to induce the other person to fall back involuntarily - they do something that provokes a response in the other person to make their brain make body move and them fall down.


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## travlingypsy (Apr 5, 2008)

But correct me if im wrong cant something moving store energy? 

Like a moving que ball. Its moving but with out direction, so then its storing energy untill someone hits it and all that energy releases into that direction?? 

... I feel really dumb right now.


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## claireauriga (Jun 24, 2008)

Don't feel dumb. Energy transfer, forces, momentum - all these things aren't as simple as they appear and university students (including me) struggle to understand them!

First of all, we have a very important rule. It's the Law of Conservation of Energy, otherwise known as the First Law of Thermodynamics. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only transferred from one form to another.

If you have a ball moving through the air at, say, 3 m/s and it hits a wall and just stops and sticks there, the kinetic energy will be transferred to elastic energy as the ball stretches and deforms and squashes and changes shape, and heat energy.

A cue ball is more complicated to describe and would be best talked about in terms of momentum transfer and stuff. Basically the energy transferred from cue to ball would be the force x the distance moved in the direction of that force, and you could probably do lots of interesting calculations involving the impulse (force x time) and momentum transfers and stuff ...

I hope I'm not boring you! I seem to have sidetracked the discussion from non-contact techniques for communicating with your horse to lots of physics and mechanics. I find it fun but not everyone does xD


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## travlingypsy (Apr 5, 2008)

lol, yah I think I get that all. But I want to do what the samurai does! I mean is there a way to learn how to control your energy levels and use them the way he did... He did what ever he did some how.


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## claireauriga (Jun 24, 2008)

Oh, I'm sure there are ways to do all kinds of things and they will be described in terms of 'energy levels' or whatever. But they're using fancy emotive language, not proper scientific talk xD I'm sure that some people can exert forces on others in ways where the explanation is not immediately apparent.

I mean, go right ahead and find out more about this stuff. But don't ask your physics teacher to describe it with the same words as the person who taught it to you.


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## travlingypsy (Apr 5, 2008)

Well I dont have a physics teacher so im good...lol


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## claireauriga (Jun 24, 2008)

Are you in school? If so, why on earth aren't you studying physics?! D:


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## Tazmanian Devil (Oct 11, 2008)

travlingypsy said:


> lol, yah I think I get that all. But I want to do what the samurai does! I mean is there a way to learn how to control your energy levels and use them the way he did... He did what ever he did some how.


Ok, what you are talking about is "chi." In martial arts terminology, that is basically "life energy." While marital artists may disagree, it is NOT the same thing a scientist would refer to as "energy." At least it is not measurable with scientific instruments. Having studied martial arts for several years, I say with the upmost respect - "chi" is closer to magic than to the scientific definition of energy.

Horses move each other without touching. They do this by communicating in a language we cannot easily understand. If you are a "nervous" person, and I am an intimidating person - when I walk towards you, you would likely move out of the way. That is not energy, that is attitude and non-verbal communication.

With training, you can train a horse to move off body language. With practice, you can move many untrained horses with body language/attitude.

If you devote your life to mastering the art, and have the innate talent, you could also probably learn to do what the samurai (sensei, sifu, etc.) does. Honestly, I believe you will find moving horses through body language an easier thing to learn.


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## claireauriga (Jun 24, 2008)

Thank you - you put it much more succintly and clearly than I was able to.


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