Poll of the Day > Had a dream about a strange physics problem...

(+) Yeah! (+)

The idea was to roll a basketball down a bowling alley and have the ball stop on the mid line.

The problems that occurred in my dream were:

- even the slightest slowest roll resulted in the ball gaining too much momentum
- even though a basketball won't fall in the gutter, it still gets railed to it like a pinball ramp
- it's very difficult to add initial backspin since a basketball is relatively sticky rubber compared to a bowling ball
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science?
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Actually the ball being rubber would allow backspin to be more effective, allowing you to more easily cause it to stop or roll backwards after a certain point.

The bolling ally is slippery, and a slight bounce initially could be used to reduce the initial effect of the back spin.

It would certainly take time/practice to get it down, but in theory you could eventually get the result you are looking for.
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