Lectures on Physics has been derived from Benjamin Crowell's Light and Matter series of free introductory textbooks on physics. See the editorial for more information....

A carnival game

In the carnival game shown in the figure, the rube is supposed to push the bowling ball on the track just hard enough so that it goes over the hump and into the valley, but does not come back out again. If the only types of energy involved are kinetic and potential, this is impossible. Suppose you expect the ball to come back to a point such as the one shown with the dashed outline, then stop and turn around. It would already have passed through this point once before, going to the left on its way into the valley. It was moving then, so conservation of energy tells us that it cannot be at rest when it comes back to the same point. The motion that the customer hopes for is physically impossible. There is a physically possible periodic motion in which the ball rolls back and forth, staying confined within the valley, but there is no way to get the ball into that motion beginning from the place where we start. There is a way to beat the game, though. If you put enough spin on the ball, you can create enough kinetic friction so that a significant amount of heat is generated. Conservation of energy then allows the ball to be at rest when it comes back to a point like the outlined one, because kinetic energy has been converted into heat.




Last Update: 2009-06-21