The Physics of a Punch!

Or why you should try not to be the recipient of an attacker's momentum! Professor Louis Bloomfield here describes the physics of punching. I recently studied Professor Bloomfield's excellent (and free!) course How Things Work: An Introduction to Physics on the Coursera site. As martial artists we should have at least a grounding in basic physics so even if you aren't a scientist by training, I strongly recommend that course to you. If only Professor Bloomfield taught a series on the physics of Aikido my happiness would be complete. Anyway, here he is explaining why a punch hurts - and why some punches hurt more than others...