Related papers: Frictionless Racquetball?
We calculate the friction force acting on a hard cylinder or spherical ball rolling on a flat surface of a viscoelastic solid. The rolling friction coefficient depends non-linearly on the normal load and the rolling velocity. For a cylinder…
A ball rolled over a shallow step will experience an increase in velocity along the direction perpendicular to the step. This causes a deflection in the ball's trajectory. In this paper we derive the equations that describe the motion of a…
A small and light polystyrene ball is released without initial speed from a certain height above the floor. Then, it falls on air. The main responsible for the friction force against the movement is the wake of successive air vortices which…
The behaviour of sports balls during impact defines some special features of each sport. The velocity of the game, the accuracy of passes or shots, the control of the ball direction after impact, the risks of injury, are all set by the…
The friction felt by a speed skater is calculated as function of the velocity and tilt angle of the skate. This calculation is an extension of the more common theory of friction of upright skates. Not only in rounding a curve the skate has…
A ball can be hit faster if it is projected without spin but it can be hit farther if it is projected with backspin. Measurements are presented in this paper of the tradeoff between speed and spin for a baseball impacting a baseball bat.…
The problem of a bouncing ball on a non-planar surface is investigated. We discovered that surface undulation adds a horizontal component to the impact force, which acquires a random character. Some aspects of Brownian motion are found in…
A new method has been proposed to evaluate the frictional force in the stationary state. This method is applied to the 1-dimensional model of clean surfaces. The kinetic frictional force is seen to depend on velocity in general, but the…
The motion of an elastic body over a rough surface is simulated in one dimension using Newtonian dynamics. We drive the body by prescribing a constant velocity. We extract the friction force from the work done by the applied force in order…
Sliding friction between two dry surfaces is reasonably described by the speed-independent Amonton-Coulomb friction force law. However, there are many situations where the frictional contact points between two surfaces are "active" and may…
Rolling of a small sphere on a solid support is governed by a non-linear friction that is akin to the Coulombic dry fiction. No motion occurs when the external field is weaker than the frictional resistance. However, with the intervention…
Putting several hard balls into a two-dimensional bowl can form a very basic two-dimensional model of hard-ball system. When the two-dimensional bowl has a parallel-rotation at a uniform speed around a center, when the number of balls is…
Experiments are done by colliding a swinging bat with a stationary baseball or softball. Each collision was recorded with high-speed cameras, from which the post-impact speed, launch angle, and spin of the ball could be determined. Initial…
In many sliding systems consisting of solid object on a solid substrate under dry condition, the friction force does not depend on the apparent contact area and is proportional to the loading force. This behaviour is called Amontons' law…
There are two alternative historical laws of rolling resistance formulated by French scientist Coulomb and Dupuit. It has been decided to verify experimentally again, which of these laws describes freely rolling ball bearings on a hard…
The motion of a block slipping on a surface is a well studied problem for flat and circular surfaces, but the necessary conditions for the block to leave (or not) the surface deserve a detailed treatment. In this article, using basic…
Sliding friction is usually introduced in high school, but rarely through activities in laboratory. A qualitative introduction to friction is presented by proposing exploration of different kind of materials in order to suggest which…
A simple model for solid friction is analyzed. It is based on tangential springs representing interlocked asperities of the surfaces in contact. Each spring is given a maximal strain according to a probability distribution. At their maximal…
We study from a statistical physics perspective the dynamics of a bouncing ball maintained in a chaotic regime thanks to collisions with a plate experiencing an aperiodic vibration. We analyze in details the energy exchanges between the…
We report an experimental, numerical and theoretical study of the motion of a ball on a rough inclined surface. The control parameters are $D$, the diameter of the ball, $\theta$, the inclination angle of the rough surface and $E_{ki}$, the…