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Yes. Imagine rowing a boat with flexible oars. Then it is easy to understand how much force is lost.



Well, not really. It's not like you'd be permanently bending the oars. When you complete each stroke you're going to get back nearly all of the energy that went into the elastic deformation. There's going to inevitably be some energy lost in warming up the oar, but it's not at all obvious that a slightly flexible oar would be perceptively or even effectively worse than a stiff oar.




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