English

Lawn tennis balls, Rolling friction experiment and Trouton viscosity

Classical Physics 2008-11-16 v2

Abstract

We took three lawn tennis balls arbitrarily. One was moderately old, one was old and another was new. Fabricating a conveyor belt set-up we have measured rolling friction coefficients, μr\mu_{r}, of the three balls as a function of their angular velocities, ωball\omega_{ball}. In all the three cases, plotting the results and using linear fits, we have obtained relations of the form μr=krolωball\mu_{r}= k_{rol} \omega_{ball} and have deduced the proportionality constant krolk_{rol}. Moreover, core of a lawn tennis ball is made of vulcanised India-rubber. Using the known values of Young modulus and shear viscosity of vulcanised India-rubbers in the theoretical formula for krolk_{rol}, we estimate krolk_{rol}s for the cores made of vulcanised India-rubbers, assuming Trouton ratio as three. The experimental results for the balls and the semi-theoretical estimates for the cores, of krolk_{rol}, are of the same order of magnitudes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0809.4823,
  title  = {Lawn tennis balls, Rolling friction experiment and Trouton viscosity},
  author = {Ankit Singh and Devang Jain and Kaustubh Kulkarni and Abhishek Budhraja and K. R. Sai Tej and Satish Sankarlingam and Anindya Kumar Biswas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.4823},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

9 pages, 6 figures