An Improved Mathematical Model of the velocity-dependent coefficient of restitution.

That is, to
of Galton Board With
Velocity-Dependent Restitution
Auni Aslah Mat Daud1
School of Mathematics and Statistics,
The University of Western Australia,
35 Stirling Highway Crawley,
Perth 6009, Western Australia, Australia
e-mail: auni_aslah@yahoo.com
A Galton board is an instrument invented in 1873 by Francis Gal-
ton (18221911). It is a box with a glass front and many horizon-
tal nails or pins embedded in the back and a funnel. Galton and
many modern statisticians claimed that a lead ball descending to
the bottom of the Galton board would display random walk. In
this study, a new mathematical model of Galton board is devel-
oped, to further improve three very recently proposed models. The
novel contribution of this paper is the introduction of the velocity-
dependent coefficient of restitution. The developed model is then
analyzed using symbolic dynamics. The results of the symbolic
dynamics analysis prove that the developed Galton board model
does not behave the way Galton envisaged.
[DOI: 10.1115/1.4036418]
1 Introduction
Galton board, or also known as quincunx, is a simple but inge-
nious mechanical device. It comprises a flat rectangular board
with many interleaved horizontal rows of evenly spaced nails. The
nails are mounted on a wooden board in a staggered order, as indi-
cated in Fig. 1. At the top of the Galton board, there is a funnel
into which small lead balls are dropped. The balls collide with the
nails, as they fall through to the bottom of the Galton board, under
the influence of gravity. At the bottom of the quincunx device,
there is a row of rectangular slots into which the balls that
fall remain to be collected. The whole experimental apparatus is
covered with a front glass sheet to enable viewing.
The classic use of a Galton board is to demonstrate the central
limit theorem and illustrate the formation of a bell-shape distribu-
tion. That is, the distribution of the shot at the bottom of the board
approaches or approximates a binomial or Gaussian distribution.
Nowadays, Galton board is often used as a typical textbook dem-
onstration of Brownian motion, probability theory, and statistical
mechanics [1]. However, most of the statistical-mechanical work
involved purely elastic collisions, followed by isokinetic trajecto-
ries (see, for example, Refs. [2,3]).
There are a number of publications on quincunx models in the
literature. The most recent study is published by Mat Daud [4],
who proposed three improved Galton board models of increasing
complexities by taking into account the angular velocity of the
ball and employing more accurate parameter values, better stick-
ing condition, and restitution models. The models were analyzed
using the symbolic dynamics analysis, and quantitatively similar
results were obtained [4]. For more information on previous
Galton board and related studies, see the paper and the references
therein.
This study has two objectives: The first objective is to propose
a new mathematical model of a Galton board with the introduction
improve the three most recent Galton board models [4]. The sec-
ond objective is to establish whether random walk is a good model
for the proposed model. That is, to confirm the hypothesis that the
details of the deterministic models are essential for demonstrating
deviations from the statistical models. Note that the physical
assumptions, the derivation of governing equations, and the limi-
tations of the model will not be provided in this paper since the
discussions have been provided in Ref. [4].
2 The Model
2.1 The Coefficient of Restitution. The coefficient of restitu-
tion e is a measure (expressed as a real number between zero and
one) of the elasticity of the collision between two or more objects.
Various models have been proposed for e [5,6]. Since the intro-
duction of e in the classical experiment by Newton in 1687, e had
been believed to be a material constant. As a result, many impact
experiments were carried out to measure e of various materials. In
general, there are two components of restitution, namely, the nor-
mal and the tangential coefficient of restitution, denoted as eN and
eT , respectively. In previous Galton board models, it is assumed
that only the normal component of the rebound velocity of the
ball is affected by the ball-nail impacts (that is, eT 1) [7,8] or
the both normal and tangential components of the rebound veloc-
ity are affected, where e eN eT [911]. Some authors have
considered that the deformation and restitution phase of the collid-
ing bodies can occur during the impact in the normal and tangen-
tial directions, where eN 6 eT [5,6].
The computation of rebound velocity of the ball in the recently
proposed quincunx models [4] is derived from the assumption.
Let v0N and vN be the normal component of the rebound and inci-
dent velocity, respectively. v0T and vT are the tangential compo-
nents of the rebound and incident velocity, respectively. The
normal and tangential coefficients of restitution are defined as
constants [4]
v0N
eN  (1)
vN
v0T
eT  (2)
vT
This assumption implies that when a lead ball bounces on a nail, it
rebounds with a velocity that depends on the coefficient of restitu-
tion of lead.

1
Present address: School of Informatics and Applied Mathematics, Universiti
Malaysia Terengganu, Kuala Nerus, 21030, Malaysia.
Contributed by the Design Engineering Division of ASME for publication in the
JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL AND NONLINEAR DYNAMICS. Manuscript received April 4,
2016; final manuscript received March 25, 2017; published online September 7,
2017. Assoc. Editor: Tomasz Kapitaniak. Fig. 1 Schematic of a Galton board

Journal of Computational and Nonlinear Dynamics NOVEMBER 2017, Vol. 12 / 060901-1

C 2017 by ASME
Copyright V

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 Fig. 2 A graph of coefficient of restitution as a function of incident speed for colliding
objects with same size and different materials, 1 ft 5 30.48 cm. Source: Ref. [12].

Fig. 3 The fraction of zeros in symbolic sequences versus R. The thick horizontal line at
0.5 indicates the expected fraction of zeros under the binomial random assumption, as
assumed by Galton. The thin horizontal lines indicate the 2r deviations from the expected
0.5 value, and the dashed horizontal lines indicate the 3r deviations from the expected
0.5 value.

In general, however, experimental studies show that e is not a In this model, the tangential coefficient of restitution eT is the
constant but depends on the impact velocity [1214]. Hodgikinson same as Eq. (2).
carried out impact experiments of various kinds of materials
and measured e against some impact velocities [13]. Goldsmith
showed the dependence of e on the impact velocity for various 2.2 Rebound Velocity. It can be shown (by substituting
materials [12]. Generally, e decreases as impact velocity increases. Eq. (5) in Appendix 2 of Ref. [4] with Eq. (3)) that the normal
Figure 2 shows the coefficient of restitution as a function of inci- rebound velocity is given by
dent velocity for spheres of the same size and different materials.
Note that the velocity is given in feet/second. Lead balls were
used in a Galtons quincunx. To simplify our numerical simula- 0 1
0:7vN
tions, the normal coefficient of restitution is approximated by fitting v0N B0:2vN  C (4)
a curve to the experimental data from the graph; we obtain a good @ 3 A
1 vN
fit with 2

0:7
eN vN 0:2   (3) The numerical simulation of the developed model is not dis-
3 cussed in this paper as it requires only trivial modification of the
1 vN
2 algorithm and flowchart provided in Ref. [4].

060901-2 / Vol. 12, NOVEMBER 2017 Transactions of the ASME

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 3 Results and Discussion
The experiment follows the work of Judd [10] and Mat
Daud [4].
It is important to note that although the results obtained in this
study are quantitatively similar with the results in the previous
studies [4,10], there are at least two new results, which may be
attributed to the significance of the velocity-dependent coefficient
of restitution. First, a fraction of zeros equals to zero or one
implies that the quincunx map has a stable periodic orbit. Results
of the simulations of the quincunx model in Ref. [10] and the first
two models in Ref. [4] show that there are a number of stable peri-
odic orbits found in the symbolic dynamics analysis. In this study,
the results in Fig. 3 show that there is no periodic orbit in the pro-
posed model. This is consistent with the results of symbolic
dynamics analysis of the most complex model in Ref. [4].
Second, a Platykurtic distribution, which is broader than Gaus-
sian or binomial, is obtained if the fraction of zeros is less than
0:5, while a Leptokurtic distribution, which is a peaked distribu-
tion, is obtained if the fraction of zeros is higher than 0:5. In Refs.
[4] and [10], Leptokurtic distributions were obtained at least for
several sets of parameter values. The results of the simulation in
Fig. 3 show that only the Platykurtic distributions were obtained,
for the ranges of parameter values considered in the simulation,
which we believe are the closest to the original Galton board.
Photographs of Galtons original quincunx appear to obtain Platy-
kurtic distributions [10].
4 Conclusions
In this study, a new mathematical model of Galton board has
been developed, with the introduction of the velocity-dependent
coefficient of restitution. This paper also addressed the question
whether Galton board behaves as suggested by Galton, using the
symbolic dynamics method which has been employed to several
previous Galton board models [4,10]. The results show that the
behavior of the ball is not compatible with the assumption of
random-independent collisions. Therefore, an identical conclusion
is drawn that the ball follows a deterministic trajectory rather than
performing a random walk and the Galton board cannot be cor-
rectly described as a statistical model only. A statistical model
might provide useful conceptual model of Galton board, but it is
in fact, better described as a deterministic model. In this paper,
the author also proposes new equations that model the velocity-
dependent coefficient of restitution and can be employed to com-
pute coefficient of restitution during impacts between lead balls
and the resulting velocity.
Although quantitatively similar results were obtained in Ref.
[4], we believe that the quincunx model presented in this paper is
the most sophisticated and much closer to the original Galton
board than the previous models. The results presented in this study
also confirm the hypothesis and further consolidate the conclusion
that the details of the deterministic models of Galton board are not
essential for demonstrating deviations from the statistical models.
Therefore, we expect that the conclusion would be very similar or
even identical if a more sophisticated model is considered in the
future.
Journal of Computational and Nonlinear Dynamics
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However, it is also important to emphasize that the results in
this paper are not identical to the results in Ref. [4]. As stated
earlier, there are at least two new minor findings, which may be
attributed to the significance of the velocity-dependent coefficient
of restitution: the number of periodic orbits and the final lead ball
distributions.
Recent studies [1519] show that there is advantage in consid-
ering the role of the nonlinear dynamics of a system and exploit-
ing the dynamics for making better predictions and forecasts of a
nonlinear dynamical system. Therefore, it is hoped that this study
can provide a more accurate description of Galton board for better
understanding and prediction of such system.
Acknowledgment
I am very grateful to Professor Kevin Judd and Dr. Thomas
Stemler for supervising this research. This study was conducted at
The University of Western Australia (UWA) and funded by
Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education.
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