Dynamics of a bouncing ball

We describe an experiment dedicated to the study of the trajectories of a ball bouncing on a vibrating plate. Using an experimental device of our own design, it is possible to impose arbitrary trajectories on the plate and we show that the entire trajectory of the ball can be reconstructed solely fr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of physics 2015-06, Vol.83 (6), p.518-524
Main Authors: Chastaing, J.-Y., Bertin, E., Géminard, J.-C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Correlation analysis
Measurement
Physics
Vibration
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Summary:We describe an experiment dedicated to the study of the trajectories of a ball bouncing on a vibrating plate. Using an experimental device of our own design, it is possible to impose arbitrary trajectories on the plate and we show that the entire trajectory of the ball can be reconstructed solely from measurement of the times the ball hits the plate. In this paper, we make use of our apparatus to introduce the notion of dissipative collisions and to propose three different ways to measure the associated restitution coefficient. We then report on correlations in the chaotic regime and theoretically discuss the complex patterns that are exhibited in the case of a sinusoidal vibration. Lastly, we show that the use of an aperiodic driving vibration makes it possible to minimize part of these correlations.
ISSN:0002-9505
1943-2909
DOI:10.1119/1.4906418