Shuttlecock
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A shuttlecock is a high-drag projectile used in the sport of badminton. It has an open conical shape: the cone is formed from sixteen overlapping goose feathers embedded into a rounded cork base. The cork is covered with thin leather.
The shuttlecock's shape makes it extremely aerodynamically stable. Regardless of initial orientation, it will turn to fly cork first, and remain in the cork-first orientation.
The name shuttlecock is frequently shortened to shuttle; a shuttlecock may also be known as a bird or birdie. The abbreviation cock is rarely used except in a jocular sense, due to its vulgar connotations. The "shuttle" part of the name was probably derived from its back-and-forth motion during the game, resembling the shuttle of a loom; the "cock" part of the name was probably derived from the resemblance of the feathers to a bird's crest.
The feathers are brittle; shuttlecocks break easily and often need to be replaced several times during a game. For this reason, synthetic shuttlecocks have been developed that replace the feathers with a plastic skirt. Players often refer to synthetic shuttles as plastics and feathered shuttles as feathers. Plastics are far more durable, typically lasting many matches without any impairment to their flight. The prices of feathers and plastics are similar, so plastics are far more economical; for this reason, many clubs prefer to play with plastics.
Yet the playing characteristics of plastics and feathers are substantially different. In particular, the skirt of a plastic shuttle will fold if the shuttle is hit very powerfully. Once the skirt has folded, the shuttle's drag will be greatly reduced; consequently, skilled players can hit plastic shuttles extremely fast with relative ease. This changes the nature of the game: in a skilled group using plastics, power play will dominate more than in a skilled group using feathers.
Most experienced and skilful players greatly prefer feathers, and serious tournaments or leagues are almost always played using feather shuttles. Experienced players generally prefer the "feel" of feathered shuttles, and assert that they are better able to control the flight of feathers than of plastics. In Asia, where feather shuttles are more affordable than in Europe and North America, plastic shuttles are hardly used at all. All senior international tournaments use only feather shuttles of the highest quality.
The shuttlecock's aerodynamic behavior was consciously replicated in the design of the spacecraft SpaceShipOne. Its "feathered" flight mode is a very stable high-drag configuration used to make the flight insensitive to orientation during atmospheric reentry.
