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    Garwin Superball

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    28 views5 pages

    Garwin Superball

    Uploaded by

    Carmen Draghia
    Garwin Superball

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    AMBRICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS vonumer 37, NUMBER 1 JANUARY 1949 Kinematics of an Ultraelastic Rough Ball Rican L. Ganwns IBM Watson Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, New York 10085 (Received 6 June 1968; revision reeeived 11 September 1968) A rough ball which consorves kinetic energy exhibits unexpected behavior after a single bounce and bizarre behavior after three bounces against parallel surfaces. ‘The Wham-O Super-Ball® {registered by Wham-O Corporation, 835 B. El Monte St., Sen Gabriel, Calif.91778), appears to approximate this behavior and provides an inexpensive and readily available model of kinematics quite different from that of a point: mass or sinooth ball. ‘The analysis is most strikingly illustrated by the fact that the bell returns to the band after three collisions with the floor, the underside of a table, and the floor. Some questions are raised concerning the dynamics of the collision INTRODUCTION “Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection” is a commonly quoted but, of course, not uni- versal result, and it is useful to demonstrate to a freshman or high school physies class that real objects exhibit behavior equally predictable but in some cases quite different. In particular, a perfectly rough ball which conserves kinetic en- ergy bebaves in such an unexpected way that it is difficult to pick up after it has bounced twice ‘upon the floor, and, more bizarre, it retums to the hand on being thrown to the floor in such a way that it bounces from the underside of a table as in Fig. 1.1 Tt tums out that the two Fic. 1, A Super Ball seems to return to the hand after bouncing against the underside of a table, while the ex pectation is for it to continue bouncing between the floor and the table as shown by the dotted line. assumptions of conservation of kinetic energy and no slip at the contacting surfaces predict ‘qualitatively the observed behavior of the Super Ball. It is not at first clear, however, how even "This was first demonstrated to me hy L. W. Alvarez swith a Whatn-O Super Ball. 88. a microscopically perfectly elastie body ean eon serve kinetic energy in such collisions, and this is discussed later. ‘Two primary assumptions suffice to determine the trajectories of the Super Ball: (a) Kinetie energy is conserved during 2 collision (the rota tional plus the translational energy of the ball is the same after collision as before). (b) There is no slip at the point of contact (the ball is “perfectly rough”). Two further conditions fol- low from the laws of mechanics: (c) Angular momentum Z about the point of contaet is con- served during the collision. (@) The normal com- ponent of velocity is reversed by a collision. {c) follows from the approximation that the contact oveurs at a point and that all forees act through that point, so their moment about that point is zero. (d) follows from the assumption of linear equations of motion and the observa- tion that, in the special ease of normal incidence without spin, all kinetic energy after the eolli- sion must again be in the normal velocity, which is therefore preserved with change of sign, as a consequence of (a). Since the spin, the normal velocity and the tangential velocity after collision aro all assumed to be linear functions of the velocities before the collision, the cross coupling. between normal velocity and the other two de- grees of freedom is shown by this special ease to be zero under all initial conditions. Figure 2 shows the elementary collision against hard surface oriented in the 22 plane. Before collision, the body has a velocity Vs along « and an angular velocity as along 2. After the bounee, those variables become V. and cs, respectively. KINEMATICS OF AN ULTRABLASTIC ROUGH BALL 89 y Fic. 2. ‘The Super Ball has velocity Vi and spin a before bouncing from the ze plane. After the bounce the velocity and spin are Y, and a rospeotively. The normsl velocity slong y is simply reversed in the eolision, The subscriptions b and @ refer to conditions before or after a given collision. 1. COLLISION KINETICS Let the moment of inertia about the = axis be T=aMR?, with a=3 for a uniform sphere. M is the mass, aud 2 the radius of the ball. Then the kkinetie energy, including only the spin w and the x component of the velocity V, is /2(V+0u"R) M/2VeraC), K=dMV'+ 4! (Ly where C=oR has been introduced to simplify the equations but in fact represents the (signed) peripheral velocity of the ball’s surface adjacent to the wall, relative to the center. ‘The angular momentum about the point of contact is then (for the ball close to the wall) L=Ie—MRV = (aMRte—MRV) =MR(aC-V), (2) in which L is expressed as the angular momen- tum about the center of the ball plus that of the center of mass about the point of eontact. ‘Thus, equating the kinetie energy and the an- gular momentum before and after a bounee, we have K=M/2( Vital) = M/2(Ve+aCs) =Ke, @B) and Is=MR(als—Vs) =MR(aCo— Ve wm (4) in which the velocities before are Vs, Cs and those after are Va, Co. Equations (3) and (4) beeome VittaCi=VataCe, @) a= Veale; (6) and simplification gives a(Cy— Ca) (CoC) = (Va Vo) VetVs), (59) a(Os- 0.) == (Va= Vs). ) Dividing, we obtain an interesting result, Cot Cos — (Vat Ve), or Vat C= —(VotCu); @) showing that the parallel velocity of the contact- ing portion of the ball, S=V-+C, is precisely reversed by a bounce. Subtracting Eq, (7) from Eq. (6) we have (a1) G~ (w#1) Cy or Co=[a-1)/(a+1) 1r—[2/(a+1) Ma; (8) and resubstituting in Eq. (7) we find Ve= —[2a/(at1)I0s~[(a-1)/ (a+) Ms. 9) Equations (8) and (9) thus give the spin and velocity after collision. For example, if spherical ball approaches the wall with «=0, Vi=V4, ie. with no spin and at an angle @=45° with respeet to the normal, ‘then C)=0 and Qa =10/7)Vs, Ven $V a, so that the ball on bouncing makes an angle 9, =tan-"(3/7) =23.2° with the outward normal from the wall. [See Fig. 3(a).] Similarly, a ball 90 RICHARD L. ld ‘ed Q 2 YF ® > Fis. 3. (a) A Super Balt with zero spin bounces from wall with tané=3/7 tang, and with spin velocity 10/7 of its initial horizontal velocity. (b) A ball with initial spin has its spin velocity reduced to 8/7 and reversed, and ‘acquires transverse velocity as shown. with initial spin velocity C, but with no trans- ational velocity Vs leaves the wall with Co=-#0, Var —40r as indicated in Fig. 3b. II, TRAJECTORIES Equations (8) and (9), and assumption (d) suffice to allow the path of a Super Ball to be traced through any number of collisions with rigid walls. One simply uses the geometry to determine Vs and Vs before any new collision, from the V, and Vs alter the previous one. One ‘then applies Eqs. (8) and (9), and assumption (d) and reprojects the velocity to obtain the initial velocities for the next eollision. Fic. 4. A Super Ball makes three successive bounces be- twoon two parallel walls. The positive sense of velocity and pia is shown before and after each of the three collisions, If we consider throwing the ball to the floor and allowing it to bounce against the underside of a table before bouncing again from the floor, wwe have the situation of Fig. 4, with the eoordi- nate system of Fig. 1, except that for bounee 2, GARWIN the coordinates used are shown in the inset, in. order to employ the standard Eqs. (8) and (9). For a ball without initial spin (Cu=0), repeated application of these equations gives Vis, Cas Vax, Css; Vay Cea; Van, Cro; and finally Vas, Cas. Nae=~Lla-D/(a+0) IV, C=[-2/ (at) WV, Ve=Ca-1) (at) JV, 2a foe 1\* (lea) CS) ¥ =[V/(at1)*T4a—(a—1)*), a1) -2 2 \fa-k oun (Silla) > Cale) ¥ =L¥/(e-1)*-2(a—1) -2(a-1)], Vo=LV/(a+1)"1[(a-1)*—40], Co= Cm Via= CV /(a-+1)* IL-8 +10? 15041], Cu=[V/(@+1) "I —ba2+200—6), For a sphere a=, and 333 130 -EY (10a) (10b) Vow ‘Thus a sphere returns after three bounces with Fic. 5. A Super Ball thrown without spin will follow the path indicated in 5(a) in bouncing from the floor to. the ‘underside of a table and beck to the floor. The tangent of the angle of bounce is 3% greater than that of the angle of incidence. For comparison, the trajectory of a body with T= 421R? is shown in 5(b)—It returas precisely slong its initial path. but 3% lower velocity than it had when it started. ‘An accurate reproduction of its trajectory is presented in Fig. 5. It is worth noting® that a +R Friedberg, private communication, December 1967. KINEMATICS OF AN ULTRAELASTIC ROUGH BALL ou body with a=] (eg. a ball containing a eontral high-density mass } that of the original ball) returns without spin and parallel to the original direction. Although gravity has been neglected in this calculation, its inclusion changes nothing, 80 long as the ball does in fact strike the under- sido of the table. It is difficult: to make all the required substitu: tions accurately, and advantage may be taken of the linear form of Eqs. (8) and (9) to define a collision matrix AL such that the velocity after a collision V, is related to the velocity before, V., by Vo: “Vay an in which V, and Vs are row vectors with three elements representing the parallel velocity V, the peripheral velocity C, and the normal velocity V,, respectively. The collision matrix is then (-a)/(at1) —2a/(at1) 0 M=| -2/(a+1) (a-1)/(a#1) 0 0 ° -1 a-1 2 0 =-VW(et),{ 2 Isa 0 |. (12) 0 0) atl, ‘Equation (12) has been used in a computer pro- gram to provide the data for Fig. 6, which shows

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