Want to increase your driver distance off the tee? Improve your golf score by 10 strokes? Carry past fairway sand traps? Boom drives over trees to cut the corner? Come learn the factors influencing the aerodynamic flight trajectory of a golf ball -things like spin rate, launch angle, and launch velocity. This knowledge won't help cure your slice or hook, but surely you'll become the Tiger Woods of your foursome after you discover how Newton's second law of motion (F = ma) coupled with lift and drag aerodynamics due to spin applies to improving your game. As an educational sidelight, you will see how easy and effective it is to apply a Visual Basic for Applications macro in an Excel spreadsheet for simulation applications.

This Visual Basic tool can help improve your productivity in "quick and dirty" analysis of many engineering problems, and it's available for free (i.e., self contained) if you use Version 5 or later of Microsoft Excel. Diskette copies of the golfball Excel Visual Basic spreadsheet (and three additional engineering Excel Visual Basic spreadsheets) will be available for distribution at the meeting.

About the Speaker:

John C. Adams, Jr., is a native of Laurinburg, North Carolina, located about 20 miles south of Pinehurst, "Mecca" of golf. He attended North Carolina State University where he received BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering. John is retired having spent his entire 34-year professional career with Sverdrup Technology, Inc., in Tullahoma, Tennessee, involving various engineering and management positions in support of the technical operating contract at the U.S. Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Center.

Internationally recognized as an authority in high-speed aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics, Dr. Adams is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a Fellow of the Arnold Engineering Development Center, and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has served as Associate Editor for High-Speed Aerodynamics of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, which is published bi-monthly by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Menu:

"Little Italy" Buffet dinner with a selection of soup, salad, chicken parmesan, ravioli, and vegetarian lasagna

Each entree comes with a dessert, and tea or coffee.

Time:

6:00 p.m. No host cocktails

6:30 p.m. Dinner

7:30 p.m. Presentation

8:30 p.m. Question and Answer session/Closing

Cost:

$20 ASME Members

$25 Non-Members

$15 ASME Student Members

Note: The ASME SF Section will be subsidizing a portion of the dinner for ASME members and students.

Directions:

From San Jose/San Ramon/Walnut Creek:
Take 680 North towards Sacramento
Take Burnett Avenue/Concord Avenue Exit
Turn Right on Burnett Avenue
Arrive at 1050 Burnett Avenue

RSVP by November 14, 2003 at (415) 721-4478 or rsvp@sf.asme.org include your name, number of guests and entree choice.