Kung Fu
I have been an instructor of Northern Seven Star Praying Mantis Kung Fu since 2006. I wrote this article for the July 2014 edition of Physics World about a move used in Kung Fu and related disciplines to get out of armlocks. The move, known as coiling, is better known to physicists as the “Dirac belt trick” used to demonstrate how it is that spin-1/2 particles can require two full rotations to bring them back to their original orientation. Here are a couple of out-takes from the photo shoot, one featuring my Kung Fu student Kit Hawes (better known as the lead guitarist from Sheelanigig). Both photos courtesy of Paul Blakemore.
The article was made into a video for the Physics World website.
I have been made aware of this write-up by the technology section of Vice magazine(!).