When we still golfed, we were known to shout ‘Fore!’ to warn people about incoming golf balls. Now that we know how dangerous those golf balls were we know we never should have stepped foot on the course.

Golf balls can reach a terrifying speed of 180 miles an hour on average. While the balls themselves have a small mass, that speed imparts a massive amount of energy - about 157 Joules.

Image credit to We are Fanatics blog

Most people aren’t used to thinking in Joules, so let’s put that in perspective. This is a semi-automatic assault rifle:

A bullet fired out of this rifle weighs 2.6 grams, and travels at 330 meters/second. That works out to 141.5 Joules of energy.

Yes, that’s right - a speeding bullet actually has less energy than a golf ball flying downrange. And these dangerous missiles are completely unregulated.

When that leads to children’s deaths, we know that we have to do the responsible thing. We have to ban golf.