Weird, Way Out There, Next Level Chit

Dan White said:
I'm saying that any potential gravity effect from the body will be negated by the friction of the cloth preventing any sideways motion. I believe there is a small depression in the cloth created at the ball/cloth contact point and this will prevent that table roll effect...
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If that were true, roll-off wouldn't happen. Roll-off does happen. It doesn't matter whether the force to the side is from Fat Fred standing too close or the fact that the table leans west or that there's a nice spring breeze through the window. You do a sum of forces and that tells you which direction the ball will be accelerated in. This is very basic physics.

Thick cloth does hide table tilt, but that's because the ball doesn't roll for as long on slow cloth. The longer the ball is rolling, the more time the small sideways forces have to act.
 
Bob Jewett said:
If that were true, roll-off wouldn't happen. Roll-off does happen. It doesn't matter whether the force to the side is from Fat Fred standing too close or the fact that the table leans west or that there's a nice spring breeze through the window. You do a sum of forces and that tells you which direction the ball will be accelerated in. This is very basic physics.

Thick cloth does hide table tilt, but that's because the ball doesn't roll for as long on slow cloth. The longer the ball is rolling, the more time the small sideways forces have to act.
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I think I would bet my house that a small depression is created at the contact point between a ball (a weight) and a fabric cloth (a compressible material) on a rigid slate table. I am talking very small and probably elastic. That depression or groove creates a well that must be overcome by the sideways force. A breeze through the window or a tilted table can easily overcome that while I believe it would be impossible for Fat Fred's mass to do it.
 
So, can I use gravity as a legit excuse for missing?

Asking for a friend who actually misses once in a while---poor guy.


Jeff Livingston
 
Dan White said:
I think I would bet my house that a small depression is created at the contact point between a ball (a weight) and a fabric cloth (a compressible material) on a rigid slate table. I am talking very small and probably elastic. That depression or groove creates a well that must be overcome by the sideways force. A breeze through the window or a tilted table can easily overcome that while I believe it would be impossible for Fat Fred's mass to do it.
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Of course there's a depression. It does not have the effect you describe because it does not have a direction to it that forces the ball to roll straight.
 
chefjeff said:
So, can I use gravity as a legit excuse for missing?

Asking for a friend who actually misses once in a while---poor guy.
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But if you blame gravity, it might get mad and stop making the balls fall into the pocket. Tread a careful path. Or rather, your friend should. ;)
 
Bob Jewett said:
Of course there's a depression. It does not have the effect you describe because it does not have a direction to it that forces the ball to roll straight.
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That's true but doesn't the ball have to overcome that small depression in order to change direction? In any case, depression or not, there is still friction. If I shoot the ball straight up the table and then I turn on a small black hole at the side pocket the ball will easily overcome the cloth friction and head towards the side pocket. If instead I replace the black hole with Fat Fred and dropped him into place as the cue ball passes the side pocket my point was that the cloth will prevent any movement towards him whatsoever whereas in the theoretical case without friction there will always be some change in direction albeit extremely small.
 
The depression does not make the ball roll straight. Any sideways force will make it turn as long as it is rolling. Really.
 
No one here actually believes that the gravity between a pool ball and a Large Man has any perceptible influence on the path of the ball, do they?

And what about the gravity of the bar, the juke box, the TV, the speakers, etc., in the room?

The number quoted in the linked article had an factor with an exponent of -9, as in 10 to the minus 9. Even if that was an actual number and not one plucked out of the, um, air.
 
dquarasr said:
No one here actually believes that the gravity between a pool ball and a Large Man has any perceptible influence on the path of the ball, do they?

And what about the gravity of the bar, the juke box, the TV, the speakers, etc., in the room?

The number quoted in the linked article had an factor with an exponent of -9, as in 10 to the minus 9. Even if that was an actual number and not one plucked out of the, um, air.
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As mentioned before, the particular shot the guy simulated was not a particularly good one to demonstrate the effect. Actually, it was lousy.

The practical take-away is that any change due to a Large Man is going to be negligible compared to anyone's stroke. Also, any shot that would be affected by LM is far too touchy for anyone to be trying.

Practical is not what the main discussion was about, though.
 
Bob Jewett said:
The depression does not make the ball roll straight. Any sideways force will make it turn as long as it is rolling. Really.
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Would the depression not be created by the balls exact location at any point along it's path so it could follow any straight or crooked path depending on various other factors such as imperfections in the cloth or slate. In other words there is no depression ahead of the ball for it to follow.
 
Dan White said:
That's true but doesn't the ball have to overcome that small depression in order to change direction? In any case, depression or not, there is still friction. If I shoot the ball straight up the table and then I turn on a small black hole at the side pocket the ball will easily overcome the cloth friction and head towards the side pocket. If instead I replace the black hole with Fat Fred and dropped him into place as the cue ball passes the side pocket my point was that the cloth will prevent any movement towards him whatsoever whereas in the theoretical case without friction there will always be some change in direction albeit extremely small.
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Think of it like a ship in a perfectly still calm ocean that has neither waves or currents in it and without winds etc. The ship has 500 small propellers in a line all down the ship's keel (longitudinal centerline) from front to back, and 499 of them are all pushing water straight back, and the final 500th propeller, the one dead center on the keel longitudinally, is mounted such that it is propelling water perpendicular to the others, in this case propelling water to the right instead of rearward like all the others. Do you think that ship is going to track exactly dead perfect straight over distance? That is a crapload of water resistance (among other things) that one little propeller is having to overcome just like the friction of the cloth.

The fat man is like that one little propeller. While that one little propeller isn't able to have a massive affect on the course of the ship, it has an effect none the less and the ship will track on a line that is very, very slightly curving to the left, and the fat man's gravitational pull is likewise going to change the cue balls direction ever so slightly as well. You may not be able to tell the ship isn't traveling perfectly straight it its first 100 yards of travel because the effect has been so minimal so as to not be observable and perhaps even measurable yet, but it is still happening and is calculable, and it will certainly be very clearly observable and measurable in the path of the ship after it has traveled 1000 miles.
 
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Bob Jewett said:
The depression does not make the ball roll straight. Any sideways force will make it turn as long as it is rolling. Really.
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I have a conceptual problem maybe you could help me with. I'm not asking for you to refresh my college physics but I'm not sure where my logic goes astray. Let me restate my thought about the depression in the cloth: If you tap a ball into the cloth it is sitting in a depression and it requires work to move it out. When you push the ball out of the dimple it has to roll into and over the small "wall" of cloth that defines the edge of the dimple. It's like climbing out of a hole. Similarly, if the ball is rolling it is continually compressing the cloth ahead of it, which also requires work similar to climbing out of the tapped dimple or hole (to a much smaller degree, of course). It's like the ball is continually traveling up hill onto the cloth in front of it until the weight of the ball compresses it.

Given the above, let's introduce the gravity caused by Fat Joe standing 90 degrees to the side of the ball's direction of travel. When the ball tries to deviate from it's current path because we dropped Joe into place as the ball passes by it will have to overcome the resistance the cloth will have to being compressed. In other words, if the gravity caused by Joe is not a large enough force to pull the cue ball over and compress the fabric in front of it then his gravity will have zero impact, not even a tiny one.

My background is more in chemistry than physics and this seems similar to an activation energy (or more likely I'm making an improper analogy here). Many reactions are not spontaneous and require an initial input of energy in order to kick it off. If you want to light a match you have to put energy into the match head by rubbing it against sand paper to get it to ignite. No matter of rubbing the match head will get it to light unless you have reached the activation energy. It seems to me that if a tiny gravitational force is not enough to "lift" the ball into the cloth fiber then it won't have any effect on the ball path whatsoever and the ball direction will continue exactly along the path you sent it with the cue.

Let me repeat that I know that the depression or dimple does not keep the ball rolling straight. I'm saying the ball has to do work to compress the fibers and if a new force (Joe's gravity) is not enough to "activate" the ball and get it over the fiber a little to Joe's direction then nothing at all will happen.

OK, let me have it.
 
Dan White said:
I have a conceptual problem maybe you could help me with. I'm not asking for you to refresh my college physics but I'm not sure where my logic goes astray. Let me restate my thought about the depression in the cloth: If you tap a ball into the cloth it is sitting in a depression and it requires work to move it out. When you push the ball out of the dimple it has to roll into and over the small "wall" of cloth that defines the edge of the dimple. It's like climbing out of a hole. Similarly, if the ball is rolling it is continually compressing the cloth ahead of it, which also requires work similar to climbing out of the tapped dimple or hole (to a much smaller degree, of course). It's like the ball is continually traveling up hill onto the cloth in front of it until the weight of the ball compresses it.

Given the above, let's introduce the gravity caused by Fat Joe standing 90 degrees to the side of the ball's direction of travel. When the ball tries to deviate from it's current path because we dropped Joe into place as the ball passes by it will have to overcome the resistance the cloth will have to being compressed. In other words, if the gravity caused by Joe is not a large enough force to pull the cue ball over and compress the fabric in front of it then his gravity will have zero impact, not even a tiny one.
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See if this helps any although I'm sure Bob will do a better job. Instead of thinking of the cue ball as sitting in a dimple or depression, think of it more like a basketball rolling across your yard which I think is a better representation. Yes, it has to be able to overcome the friction from the blades of grass (the cloth fibers), but it isn't really in a "depression", it is just on a lawn.

Now if you slammed down on the top of the basketball hard enough perhaps you can create a very tiny actual depression such as when you tap in a ball on a table, but that condition doesn't exist during a normal pool game. Even if it did, once the ball is rolling it has now overcome the "hill" it had to climb out of and is back on the flat lawn subject to much easier influence from any force acting upon it (the "depression" does not stay with the ball as it moves but at best is only there when it is at rest, but even that isn't technically correct but it isn't a horrible way to think about it).

There is also identical rolling resistance to the ball regardless of which direction it were to roll so it has no reason to roll anywhere but where the forces that are acting upon it (including Fat Albert) are directing it to roll. Fat Albert is like that one propeller out of the 500 and it has to be able to have an effect on a moving object no matter how minimal it may be.

Here is an example that may also help to conceptualize how the ball's resistance to various forces (including Fat Albert) is highly diminished once it is rolling. If you have ever driven a vehicle without power steering, or where the power steering has gone completely out, you know that it is extremely difficult and sometimes all but impossible to turn the wheels/steering wheel when the vehicle is sitting there stopped, but once you get the vehicle up to speed it actually turns fairly easily.
 
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If this effect is at all significant, I still think it would be dwarfed by other effects, such as nap (even on "napless" cloth), as well as slate effects (on 3 slate or more tables, one or more of the slates may be out of level and create "uphill" and "downhill" effects. That is not to mention "track" effects where the cueball tends to roll in tracks in the cloth, created by wear.

The whole thing reminds me of something on the Bundy tv show, wherein Al tells the story of a woman so fat, she had 3 smaller women orbiting around her.
 
Straightpool_99 said:
If this effect is at all significant, I still think it would be dwarfed by other effects, such as nap (even on "napless" cloth), as well as slate effects (on 3 slate or more tables, one or more of the slates may be out of level and create "uphill" and "downhill" effects....
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Not to mention that a person of serious gravity standing on one side of the table will make the floor sag on that side.
 
If a player could accelerate a proton around the table bed at near light speed and crash into another proton, a black hole would form and that would bend some balls.

Of course, that table would be banned for playing 1 pocket.


Jeff Livingston
 
More concerning to me than gravity waves are these 7 little-known health risks of today's ubiquitous, omni-directional waves of Wi-Fi networks:

https://www.activebeat.com/your-health/children/connecting-to-7-little-known-health-risks-of-wi-fi-networks/?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google_search_network&utm_campaign=ABI_GGL_US_DESK-SearchMarketing_C2S_CONV&utm_content=g_c_517591731763&cus_widget=&utm_term=wifi health issues&cus_teaser=kwd-964380897&utm_acid=9751309403&utm_caid=12874918745&utm_agid=122000557352&utm_os=&device=c&utm_pagetype=mixed&rs_query={utm_term}&gclid=Cj0KCQiAk4aOBhCTARIsAFWFP9F7jXemcNRIgm400d7tZaElHodnWnoSSEADJ1DnaNK3zbF9uggEZeIaAhllEALw_wcB

Arnaldo ~ People worldwide are getting increasingly dippier directly because of these WiFi waves that completely penetrate all ambient organisms (and pool balls, btw).
 
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The force the author is talking about is so miniscule, it can be completely ignored. But it does exist.

Put a pair of dice in space 1 Inch apart. Over the next several hours, the gravity created by their mass will draw each of them together.

The theory is sound, but the application referring to billiards is weak.
 
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