Physicists and Billiard Balls - Do You Know Your History?

i think dr dave mentioned him in that podcast with neil degrasse tyson. wouldn't have remembered the name.

but i do know pool balls were made of nitrocellulose for a while.
 
garczar said:
He also figured out if you wanna shoot something/somebody from a long way off you have to adjust for deflection of the speeding/spinning bullet. Top-notch snipers figure the CE into their shot solutions. At something like 1500yds you may have to correct around 5" due the CE. A lot depends on the latitude that the shot is taken from.
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I do this calculation on the pool table. Probably why i miss by a diamond or more.
 
maha said:
latitude has an effect. but shooting north or south is where it deflects the most left or right, depending on your hemisphere.

and east or west no sideways effect but a vertical one.
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So now I have to factor in the table direction (North/South)? And latitude? lol
 
slateman
of course you have to judge for east west north south. dont you know why you have been missing so much?
havent you noticed all pool rooms have their tables in a straight row. its so the customers wont miss so much and quit early.

plus if you use special high priced chalk it grabs more so you get unintended english called ball grab, which makes you miss. thats why the pros still use masters chalk.

and those non wood shafts gives less deflection, but dont work for the earth shifts effect so you now cannot adjust for it like a wood shaft automatically does.
 
MitchAlsup said:
It also depends if you shoot east or west du to the earth moving between time of ignition and time of impact.
A 308 at 1000 yards changes by ~2" E/W -- west hits higher, east hits lower.
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A well known, but nonsensical, argument says planes shouldn't be able to fly because as the Earth rotates the atmosphere doesn't, creating up to 1,000 mph "headwinds".

This argument seems to assume the shooter doesn't rotate with the Earth. What am I missing?

pj
chgo
 
DynoDan said:
And that was under perfect conditions (when no one was shooting at you, and your friends weren’t going down in flames). Many B17 bombs landed miles off target.
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Yes,when your getting shot back at? That will flat rattle some folks! I know!
 
Patrick Johnson said:
A well known, but nonsensical, argument says planes shouldn't be able to fly because as the Earth rotates the atmosphere doesn't, creating up to 1,000 mph "headwinds".

This argument seems to assume the shooter doesn't rotate with the Earth. What am I missing?
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Your argument would work in a vacuum where the bullet is not decelerating but only under the influence of gravity.

I tried to write an explanation and failed--so let me go do some homework to figure out why. I know the answer is similar to why shooting up hill and downhill are nearly the same correction but not exactly the same correction.
 
MitchAlsup said:
Your argument would work in a vacuum where the bullet is not decelerating but only under the influence of gravity.

I tried to write an explanation and failed--so let me go do some homework to figure out why. I know the answer is similar to why shooting up hill and downhill are nearly the same correction but not exactly the same correction.
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I'll look for it - thanks.

pj
chgo
 
MitchAlsup said:
Need to be careful here, as physics contains geometry. That is physics is a strict superset of geometry.
It is easier if one considers geometry as the linear parts of physics.
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Unless you were around before Euclid, our “usual” geometry is a series of deductions from 5 postulates in Euclid’s “Elements”. These deductions are independent of whether or not they describe the natural world

Yet it turn out that this geometry (along with more bizarre and unintuitive math) proves to be an example of the “Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” , which is the title of 1960 paper by Eugene Wigner (physicist) … you can read this paper online .. and it has its own Wikipedia entry.

Geometry is not a subset of physics, it just works well with it.
 
I‘m pretty sure I missed a long slow inside spin shot because of a full moon.
 
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