Long sword VS Katana

Mitch, I'm not sure about your analysis vis a vis arrows and gravity. Arrows don't have much mass, and that means that the terminal velocity of an arrow is likely to be much lower than the velocity that you could achieve with a good bow.

Regarding the longbow, one of its key attributes was the rate at which a trained archer could shoot it. As a modern analogy, you'd be much better off comparing the longbow with a machine gun or a mortar than a sniper rifle.

I think that for the most part the trend to talk about Asian weapons and armor being superior to Western European armaments is just an offshoot of revisionist history, which is basically a sport wherein people take just about any presumption of 19th century Europeans and invert it. The reality is always far more complex than the 19th century presumption or its inversion.

The best comments in this thread, in my opinion, have been the ones that have pointed out that you cannot actually compare the two weapons because they were tools intended for different purposes. The people of Asia and Europe were innovating within their particular contexts and were seeking ways to make better weapons and armor to defeat their specific enemies, not any enemy that ever might come along.

Earlier, someone mentioned that Japanese arrows were designed to cut armor ties, not to pierce it.  I did a bit of research online (gods help me) and found an illustration accompanying this <<In general the standard point style looking like a small Yari (spear) were used for war and armor piercing.>>

Mitch, I'm not sure about your analysis vis a vis arrows and gravity. Arrows don't have much mass, and that means that the terminal velocity of an arrow is likely to be much lower than the velocity that you could achieve with a good bow.

Its a matter of physics. But since I'm not a physics pro, and I don't know the formula off the top of my head, I'll explain it as simply as I myself understand it. Despite the small mass, the speed and gravitational elements are huge contributors to the effect on impact. Consider a Trebuche. The high volley of stones from great hieght enourmously maginfied the impact of the hit. The same is with an arrow, even though the arrow is smaller, the decent per second per second  acceleration greatly magnifies the impact. Using a small stone, take it and hold it in your hand, drop it. It will leave a small impact in the dirt. Take the same stone and huck it with a device that sends it farther up that you can toss it, on impact it wil leave a far better stone. Just because an arrow has a small mass, doesn't mean the physics don't apply. Even more so, as the small object with great velocity is just as deadly. Its actually one of the principles behind futuristic weapons like rail guns and the 'rod from god', the former of which many have heard of, but the latter is simply dropping a pointy metal shaft from orbit and allowing gravity to accelerate a non-warhead small metal spear to such speeds that the impact is like a mini nuke detonation. Google it, smarter peeps than me will explain it, but the same principle applies to hurled rocks, and yes, arrows Ok, now I've done it. I've now tossed in Buck Rogers into the conversation I'll bow out here on it heh.

I'll bow out here on it heh.

Pun intended?  

I'll let Wikipedia explain terminal velocity:

A free-falling object achieves its terminal velocity when the downward force of gravity (Fg) equals the upward force of drag (Fd). This causes the net force on the object to be zero, resulting in an acceleration of zero.[1]

As the object accelerates (usually downwards due to gravity), the drag force acting on the object increases, causing the acceleration to decrease. At a particular speed, the drag force produced will equal the object's weight (mg). At this point the object ceases to accelerate altogether and continues falling at a constant speed called terminal velocity (also called settling velocity). Terminal velocity varies directly with the ratio of weight to drag. More drag means a lower terminal velocity, while increased weight means a higher terminal velocity. An object moving downward with greater than terminal velocity (for example because it was affected by a downward force or it fell from a thinner part of the atmosphere or it changed shape) will slow until it reaches terminal velocity.

So my point about the arrow is that it doesn't weigh much and therefore has a low terminal velocity. I suspect that an arrow has a greater velocity when it is shot from a bow than its terminal velocity, which means that as the arrow descends it will actually decelerate from the shot velocity to the terminal velocity, since atmospheric drag will apply equally on its way up and down. So upon being shot, the arrow climbs up into the sky until it has expended all of its kinetic energy overcoming gravity and drag. The arrow then begins to fall back to earth, but reaches its terminal velocity at some point along the way and stops accelerating; drag consumes the leftover energy and your arrow hits the ground at its terminal velocity, which is slower than the velocity it had when it was shot out of the bow. All of this is assuming that the terminal velocity of an arrow is less than the velocity that a bow can put on it...

Both of the examples that you sited involve objects whose weights would afford them terminal velocities in excess of the velocities that humans or their machines could give them. So they are correct, but poor analogies for the spritely arrow, I think.

Actually, this is alot simpler than the above. Now that I've had some time to ponder it, what we're really dealing with here is the law of conservation of energy. If you shoot an arrow into the sky, you expend energy overcoming gravity. When the arrow begins to fall, the only accelerating force is gravity, which is necessarily less than the force that got the arrow up in the sky in the first place. There is no way that an arrow can come down with a greater force than it was shot.

Add to that drag, which both on the ascent and descent is transforming some of the arrow's kinetic energy into thermal energy, and there is no way that it can even come down equal to the shot force.

Matt you are 99% right. The only time that Terminal Velocity could exceed initial Velocity is if you were to shoot the arrow weakly off a cliff. then the intial would be less. But everything else is 100% right. I saw a show on discovery where they shot an arrow straight down at 2 different distances. The closer target was penetrated further than the one 100m further.

Only saying cause I passed the AP physics exam and loved kinematics

The rest of the stuff on the swords has been very informative! Thanks for the cool reading material guys.