Related papers: Protecting billiard balls from collisions

We consider systems of "pinned balls," i.e., balls that have fixed positions and pseudo-velocities. Pseudo-velocities change according to the same rules as those for velocities of totally elastic collisions between moving balls. The times…

Systems of pinned billiard balls serve as simplified models of collisions, where all particles remain fixed in their positions while their (pseudo-)velocities evolve in accordance with the laws of conservation of energy and momentum. For…

We consider systems of "pinned balls," i.e., balls that have fixed positions and pseudo-velocities. Pseudo-velocities change according to the same rules as those for velocities of totally elastic collisions between moving balls. The times…

We obtain an upper bound of the number of collisions of any billiard trajectory in a polyhedral angle in terms of the minimal eigenvalue of a positive definite matrix which characterizes the angle. Elements of the matrix are scalar products…

The principal angles between binary collision subspaces in an $N$-billiard system in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space are computed. These angles are computed for equal masses and arbitrary masses. We then provide a bound on the number of…

We study the collision between the cue and the ball in the game of billiards. After studying the collision process in detail, we write the (rotational) velocities of the ball and the cue after the collision. We also find the squirt angle of…

We study the collision dynamics of a spinning cue ball approaching a static object ball with equal mass on a plane, common in billiards. While typical collisions in billiards are nearly perfectly elastic, with a restitution coefficient…

We give a new upper bound $K_+$ on the number of totally elastic collisions of $n$ hard spheres with equal radii and equal masses in $R^d$. Our bound satisfies $\log K_+ \leq c(d) n \log n$.

We give a new and elementary proof that the number of elastic collisions of a finite number of balls in the Euclidean space is finite. We show that if there are $n$ balls of equal masses and radii 1, and at the time of a collision between…

We analyze the impact of two equal billiard balls in three ideal situations: when the balls freely slide on the plane of the billiard, when they roll without sliding and when one of them freely slides and the other rolls. In all the cases…

A simple relation is developed between elastic collisions of freely-moving point particles in one dimension and a corresponding billiard system. For two particles with masses m_1 and m_2 on the half-line x>0 that approach an elastic barrier…

Mathematical billiards is much like the real game: a point mass, representing the ball, rolls in a straight line on a (perfectly friction-less) table, striking the sides according to the law of reflection. A billiard trajectory is then…

Consider a situation with $n$ agents or players where some of the players form a coalition with a certain collective objective. Simple games are used to model systems that can decide whether coalitions are successful (winning) or not…

The ball-constrained weighted maximin dispersion problem $(\rm P_{ball})$ is to find a point in an $n$-dimensional Euclidean ball such that the minimum of the weighted Euclidean distance from given $m$ points is maximized. We propose a new…

This paper explores two instances where dissipation plays a crucial role in curbing the unbounded energy growth of particles in time-dependent billiards. The first example involves an elliptical-like billiard with inelastic collisions…

The billiard table is modeled as an $n$-dimensional box $[0,a_1]\times [0,a_2]\times \ldots \times [0,a_n] \subset \mathbb{R}^n$, with each side having real-valued lengths $a_i$ that are pairwise commensurable. A ball is launched from the…

Dirichlet problem in an $n$-dimensional billiard space is investigated. In particular, the system of ODEs $\ddot x(t) = f(t,x(t))$ together with Dirichlet boundary conditions $x(0) = A$, $x(T) = B$ in an $n$-dimensional interval $K$ with…

We study the smallest intersecting and enclosing ball problems in Euclidean spaces for input objects that are compact and convex. They link and unify many problems in computational geometry and machine learning. We show that both problems…

We study the geometry of billiard orbits on rectangular billiards. A truncated billiard orbit induces a partition of the rectangle into polygons. We prove that thirteen is a sharp upper bound for the number of different areas of these…

We show that the complexity of the billiard in a typical polygon grows cubically and the number of saddle connections grows quadratically along certain subsequences. It is known that the set of points whose first n-bounces hits the same…