unjust wrote:i still think it's not newtons cradle.
it's like a cueball following a stripe and rebounding off the bumper while the stripe stops. that model explains master keyed behavior, and a host of other nuances.
You're right that the "newton's cradle" isn't an exact match for the way bumping works, but like you posted earlier in the thread the cradle is a great example to explain the basic concept to someone.
It's been years and years since I took the relevant classes in engineering school, but modeling the kinetic behavior of bumping would be quite easy to do mathematically. Then you could play around with different masses of pins, rates of springs, etc, and see how things change. But I hate to admit it's been so long since I learned that I'm not a position to do it and I doubt the software that I learned to use is even around anymore. But I'd imagine it couldn't be too hard to find an engineering student who is up on their equations of motion to knock that out. It's a pretty simple spring-mass system. I know I was assigned far more complex problems as homework back then!
