Bow and Arrow - Description

Description

A bow is a flexible length of material which shoots aerodynamic projectiles called arrows. A string joins the two ends and when the string is drawn back, the ends of the stick are flexed. When the string is released, the potential energy of the flexed stick is transformed into the velocity of the arrow. Archery is the art or sport of shooting arrows from bows.

Today, bows and arrows are used primarily for hunting and for the sport of archery. Though they are still occasionally used as weapons of war, the development of gunpowder and muskets, and the growing size of armies, led to their replacement in warfare several centuries ago in much of the world.

Someone who makes bows is known as a bowyer, and one who makes arrows is a fletcher —or in the case of the manufacture of metal arrow heads, an arrowsmith.

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