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Calculus of the perfectly centered break of a perfectly aligned pool ball rack

Jim Belk, Bard College
Posted 10 years ago
Attachments:
BilliardsHertz.nb
POSTED BY: Jim Belk
11 Replies
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Why are there no attachments anymore? Jim, your Bard webpage also seems to have disappeared. Do you still have a copy of this notebook/Manipulate? I'd love to play with and add to it!
POSTED BY: Peter Barendse

Or anyone has the notebook of BilliardHertz.nb from Professor Jim Belk? It is appreciated that someone can share the 2014 code once again!

Even if it is a Mathematica 8.0 version is fine! As I have kept a Mathematica 8.0 in an old computer, I can run the Mathematica 8.0 code robustly!
POSTED BY: Ching Li

The code is available again in the main post. Thanks to Dr. James Belk for providing it.
POSTED BY: Ahmed Elbanna
POSTED BY: Chuck Fingerman

Given how many youngsters play pool, this could certainly be something that may give teachers a few ideas for an illustration that gets students to pay attention. It has a lot of 'real-world' relevance for them, I think it's fair to say :)
POSTED BY: Richard Asher
Frederick Wu
Frederick Wu, SMEE
Posted 9 years ago
POSTED BY: Frederick Wu

This is now is very popular - a top thread - on reddit physics with 97% upvoted > 300 points (currently):

http://redd.it/2rsqni
POSTED BY: Sam Carrettie

This comment on the reddit thread:

Assuming the two corner balls don't bounce back and interfere, it looks like this break would sink two of the balls in the side pockets on an 8 foot table: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27794628/BilliardsHertz2.gif

links to the nice simulation below.

enter image description here
POSTED BY: Vitaliy Kaurov

This is beautiful.

Which version of mathematica are you using? I tried your notebook in M10.0.2 and it threw errors and the manipulate didn't work as your animated gif shows that it does.

$System is "Mac OS X x86 (64-bit)"
POSTED BY: W. Craig Carter

I attached corrected for V9+ notebook to this post.

I think Jim is using earlier versions. To make this work in V9+ the function NDSolve should have corrected method specification

NDSolve[..., Method -> {"DiscontinuityProcessing" -> False}]

and it is better for Manipulate to have SaveDefinitions -> True.

Attachments:
POSTED BY: Vitaliy Kaurov

looks like the attachment here disappeared
POSTED BY: Peter Barendse
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