ah! maybe that's why my hybrid gadget with the 1st ball mass 2m is only kicking out one ball. something with string length. or that the shock wave pattern is being disrupted by the ball's bigger diameter. On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Bill Gosper <billgosper@gmail.com> wrote:
I tried to do this by thinking of the balls as springs with a very big constant instead of as rigid bodies. Then the question of space between them doesn't seem so important any more, and I start to think that the behavior of the system will depend more on the structure of the big ball (how does it compress compared with the small balls).
I still don't see how to predict exactly what will happen. In fact, my cluelessness about the way the big spring acts makes me even less clueful about what should happen.
--Joshua Zucker Neil is cheating. He has this amazing physics simulator from http://www.phunland.com/wiki/Home that even models air resistance. The clone feature naturally placed the balls slightly apart, which we deemed a plus, but strangeness ensued! The middle balls soon started moving, then gradually calmed down, then gradually excited again, ...
It turns out to depend on string length! If the strings are short and the gaps are large, the ball collisions are off center. So make the strings really long, and all should be clear. --rwg (Neil wishes to point out that his incorrect answer preceded the software experiment. He may be a poor theoretician but never a poor experimentalist.) _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun