Flails
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The flail, also known as a mace and chain or morning star mace, was a late medieval weapon consisting of a short rod with a chain at one end attaching it to a heavy, usually spiked, ball. Flails were not used very often because an experienced enemy could easily step in close to a user making the flail useless. However the flail does have some interesting advantages that we can analyze with physics. First, the combination of rod and chain created a very long weapon that could create huge amounts of force since a small acceleration at the center creates a large velocity on the end. Second if an opponent attempted to block the flail and the chain hit their weapon or shield, the ball would whip around and hit them in the arm or head. This is because the momentum of the ball would not change but the radius of the circle it was moving along would decrease so it's velocity would increase. The most useful aspect of the flail was its unpredictability. Anyone not familiar with the weapon would not anticipate the strikes from behind that the chain creates.
skip to six minutes to see the flail in action
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