Chrome balls

[Bob Jewett]

My first thoughts about this set involved a fool and his money. Then I had second thoughts. About seventy-five dollars for a solid steel two and a quarter inch ball. It would be great fun to have the other player hit this ball, especially a full power shot like a break shot. A rough guess this ball would weigh about a dozen times as much as the weight of a normal cue ball! Could be dangerous if a shaft shattered so probably best to stay well back and pick someone you don't like a whole lot to try this switch on.

Hu

Steel is about five times as dense as cast phenolic pool balls. That would make the steel ball about twice as heavy as the typical cue stick so the cue should bounce back off the ball.

Maybe you could get some depleted uranium instead.:grin-devilish: It's over twice the density of steel.

 

[ShootingArts]

Well if you are gonna be a spoil sport...

Steel is about five times as dense as cast phenolic pool balls. That would make the steel ball about twice as heavy as the typical cue stick so the cue should bounce back off the ball.

Maybe you could get some depleted uranium instead.:grin-devilish: It's over twice the density of steel.

The hard part about depleted uranium would be getting it in the size and shape desired. Even at the slow velocities of a 12 gauge shotgun a DU round punches through an inch of steel seemingly with no problem at all.

I guess a plan "B" could be filling a hollow steel ball with mercury. I don't know what it would weigh but I do know it weighs roughly eighty-five pounds to the pint. Some morons had a pint of it in a mason jar and thought it was funny to hand it to people without warning then.

Hu

 

[Bob Jewett]

... mercury. I don't know what it would weigh but I do know it weighs roughly eighty-five pounds to the pint. ...

That's way off. A pint of water is a pound within 5%. Mercury has a specific density of 13.56, so a pint of mercury would be 14 pounds.

Osmium is the densest element at 22.59 times the density of water which would make a pool ball that weighs 82 ounces (instead of 6). At about $400/ounce, it would cost $36,000 per ball, plus machining charges or half a million per set. In contrast, the balls above are a bargain.:thumbup:

Osmium:

 

[ShootingArts]

Interesting!

That's way off. A pint of water is a pound within 5%. Mercury has a specific density of 13.56, so a pint of mercury would be 14 pounds.

Osmium is the densest element at 22.59 times the density of water which would make a pool ball that weighs 82 ounces (instead of 6). At about $400/ounce, it would cost $36,000 per ball, plus machining charges or half a million per set. In contrast, the balls above are a bargain.:thumbup:

Osmium:

View attachment 537743

Interesting. I don't know what was in the jar. I was told it was mercury, it was silver colored, and behaved as a liquid. The jar was very close to full, I wouldn't argue a few percentage points either way. When it was put on laboratory scales it weighed 85 pounds. I was a pretty manly man at the time spending a lot of my time climbing up and down structure in the petro-chem plants. I could lift the jar with one hand from counter top high with a lot of effort. After picking it up six inches more or less for maybe fifteen seconds or so I used the other hand to stabilize it to set it back on the counter safely. For comparison, I swung a 24lb sledge hammer for twelve hours one day and regularly swung a twenty while helping put together the biggest land oil rig in the world at the time, Goldrus #1.

Hu