Re: squash ball question

["Dewey Dykstra, Jr." <dykstrad@EMAIL.BOISESTATE.EDU>]

> I have a student doing a project on squash balls: these are rather soft
> rubber balls which don't bounce very well, but get more and more elastic as
> their temperature is raised through being slammed around the court.
>
> He's measuring the coefft of restitution at different temperatures, and
> getting something like a linear graph. The problem is to produce an
> explanation. He needs to be pointed in a fruitful direction, but I find
> myself stuck. It seems clear that it's the air inside the ball that causes
> this behaviour, rather than the rubber, but how to relate this to the
> dissipation that occurs during a bounce...?
>
> I'd appreciate any ideas.
>
> Mark

Mark:
I'm confused.  Racquetballs are hollow, but I don't remember squash balls
being particularly hollow.

Dewey


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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr.                 Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics                  Dept:  (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418      Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University            dykstrad@email.boisestate.edu
1910 University Drive                 Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570                  novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned."  --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.
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