David Kreuger, a writer at 24fightingchickens.com (no, really, it’s a serious shotokan site) has done a little research regarding punching. A physics journal published a paper, and David sums it up for us. What’s the scoop? I’ll just point you at his post and you can see for yourself. For those who want to see the original article, sorry but you’ll have to subscribe to the American Journal of Physics, however, another article on the same topic that cites the original can be found here.
Dan Djurdjevic has a good article with some interesting insights on this as well at http://dandjurdjevic.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-corkscrew-your-punch.html