Frozen or not frozen?

[JoeyA]

Jerk a hair loose from any body part (some body parts make a bigger impression than others) yelling quite loud and if you can see slide the hair between the ball and the rail. If the hair fits between the ball and the rail (without moving the object ball, the ball is not frozen.

Or you can do what we do, borrow a fresh cigarette (not lit) and slide it under the rail. If you can see the white paper of the whole cigarette while looking between the rail and the object ball, the ball is not frozen. This works quite well and settles most arguments about it being frozen or not. The first suggestion, not so good. :wink:

 

[klockdoc]

Frozen is hard against the rail where there is no light visible between the ball and the rail.

If you can see light between the ball and the rail it isn't frozen, no matter what sort of debris is touching the ball.

When difficult to determine, I slide a cigarette (not lit) under the rail so the background is white when viewing from the top.

If I can see white, the ball is not froze. If I do not see white, the ball is froze.

Fairly simple.

 

[The Chinchilla]

The rules (WSR) do not clarify beyond "touching". A fair way to decide is to call over an uninterested party and without telling him which player wants which decision, ask him "Is that ball touching the cushion?"

I was called over to call this once, and the ball was much like described here. I said to the players "it is touching but not frozen" and let them work it out. I mean, i'm not a trained ref. That was the best i knew what to do.

This is a good question, glad it doesn't come up a lot.

 

[jay helfert]

I have a sure fire way to solve this problem. It the ball is cold then it must be frozen! Not cold - not frozen! Works for me. :thumbup:

 

[PoolBum]

Well, of course we could get technical about the situation and say that the ball never actually touches the cushion, according to physics.

I suppose that might unnecessarily complicate things though.