Interesting Article: Billiards Math is Hard

[Ghost of OBC]

Happened upon an interesting article about the surprising difficulty of billiards math. Thought some of you might enjoy it.

Be warned, serious math content.


https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-mysterious-math-of-billiards-tables-20240215/

 

[boogieman]

Interesting. They did a good job explaining it to the laymen, ie. me.

 

[straightline]

Geometric Calculus or whatever pool math comes under wont make anything for you. AFAIK, nobody's even figured out the offsets so you could shoot the results of a calculation - well, other than the odd dead thing.

 

[MitchAlsup]

Be warned, serious math content.


https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-mysterious-math-of-billiards-tables-20240215/

But completely wrong (by ignoring the spin (both L<->R and T<->B).)

 

[pt109]

I have an old friend who used to play pool….pretty good….got away from the game to excel in the IT field.
Hadn’t hit a ball for a few years…had a day off and came to the pool hall…..he played for a couple hours and asked me questions……he said “I used to think this game was math, you‘ve convinced me it’s physics.
Ignore physics at your peril.

 

[GoldCrown]

4 out 3 players can’t count regardless

 

[Bob Jewett]

Happened upon an interesting article about the surprising difficulty of billiards math. Thought some of you might enjoy it. ...

Perfectly reflecting "rails" of arbitrary shape. Essentially nothing to do with cue sports. I know some billiard book collectors who were surprised and disappointed when they bought some books on the subject.

 

[book collector]

Happened upon an interesting article about the surprising difficulty of billiards math. Thought some of you might enjoy it.

Be warned, serious math content.


https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-mysterious-math-of-billiards-tables-20240215/

How hard can 1- 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 be?

 

[Texas Carom Club]

Yeah
I believe bvm once did a article entitled
Don’t do math while playing billiards

 

[pvc lou]

Enter @justnum stage left... staggering, just woke up with a stiff sock stuck to his elbow.

 

[Hirsty]

Keeping score in snooker is an nightmare

 

[Quesports]

This would have been right up Jimmy Reid’s alley. He was a math prodigy. Just watch his lessons on the diamond system. He calculates shots by math at the speed of a super computer.
RIP Jimmy!

 

[Ghost of OBC]

But completely wrong (by ignoring the spin (both L<->R and T<->B).)

I think they explain very well what their assumptions are. Donald in Mathmagic Land discusses spin, so I don't think they missed it.

 

[straightline]

4 out 3 players can’t count regardless

Moass ad reel gud.

 

[Bob Jewett]

I think they explain very well what their assumptions are. Donald in Mathmagic Land discusses spin, so I don't think they missed it.

No spin involved. From the article:

They typically assume that their billiard ball is an infinitely small, dimensionless point and that it bounces off the walls with perfect symmetry, departing at the same angle as it arrives, as seen below.​

​

Without friction, the ball travels indefinitely unless it reaches a corner, which stops the ball like a pocket. The reason billiards is so difficult to analyze mathematically is that two nearly identical shots landing on either side of a corner can have wildly diverging trajectories.​

​

Pool balls don't work like that. Not even close. The math "billiards" has almost nothing to do with real billiards. The people who study this stuff are happy with 99-rail shots or even 1000000-rail shots.

 

[GoldCrown]

Moass ad reel gud.

He do

 

[straightline]

He do

Kuhll.

 

[book collector]

I was a maths progidy two

 

[straightline]

Dubbul kuhllur.

 

[zencues.com]

Stop thinking and just make the damn ball.