3 ms·
I'd love to know how many people have swamped him with the correct answer so far. Any junior high physic student could answer this.
by burgerbrain 16y ago
I'd love to know how many people have swamped him with the correct answer so far. Any junior high physic student could answer this.
- cperciva 16y agoI'm more curious to know how many people have sent in incorrect answers. My immediate guess disagreed with my mathematics.
- btilly 16y agoMy immediate guess agreed with my mathematics. But I have the advantage that a variant of this problem had occurred to me some 20 years ago, and I worked it out. In fact, pick up a bouncy ball and drop it on a flat surface. You can observe the fact that bounces become smaller and more rapid, and then they stop bouncing entirely. There may be some residual vibration that is not apparent, but it sure seems to act like this toy model of the situation says it should.
- cperciva 16y agoIn fact, pick up a bouncy ball and drop it on a flat surface. You can observe the fact that bounces become smaller and more rapid, and then they stop bouncing entirely. Indeed, I've done that -- but my intuition told me that it was stopping due to friction, not due to the exponential decay of an infinite number of bounces. :-) It's oddly disappointing to realize that the model actually acts more or less the same as the real world for once.
- btilly 16y agoIndeed, I've done that -- but my intuition told me that it was stopping due to friction, not due to the exponential decay of an infinite number of bounces. :-) But your intuition was correct! Without friction the bounces would be perfectly elastic and wouldn't go into exponential decay! :-)
- sswam 16y agoMy experience has been that although the topics needed are covered in high school physics and math (limits), most people did not get it right.