Billiard balls roll, which means that at the instant of contact there
is a transverse scraping, like a clutch engaging, which wastes more
energy than a classic elastic sphere conservation-of-momentum physics
problem. The angular momentum transfer is a lot like transferring
charge between two capacitors by connecting them with a resistor, but
worse because of the felt.
Air hockey is closer to classic elastic collision.
John
It appears that we agree on something today.
The "clutching" you refer to is due to the inertia of the spin on the
rolling ball imparting a torqueing force to the ball it makes contact
with in the fraction of a second that the "less than 100% elastic
collision" takes to occur, and is, of course 100% related to the
coefficient of friction between the two colliding masses.
"Air Hockey" is actually about as close as one can get to modeling the
ideal circumstance of a pure elastic collision with zero losses here on
this globe's surface (table MUST be 100% level). Ill bet that it would
be cool to experiment with different "puck" materials. The puck must
also have very, VERY 'true' side faces. That is to say... they must be
square to the puck faces.
I am an advanced Masse' 'applicator' in billiards. I can even compress
a ball against a rail nose so hard that it compresses it shape into it
before rebounding. This allows for a lot more manipulation of the energy
one places into the rubber rail.
If I use "draw" on the cue ball, it imparts "follow" on the object
ball, which then causes it to 'loft' a bit upon compression of the rail.
This makes the rebound event occur at a plane other than that of the
table bed (i.e. 1,2, 3, or 4 degrees a.o.a.)
I can bank a ball "cross-side" 100% in the air, after the rail contact
is made, if I 'loft' it in such a manner. I can do it full table length
as well, but it takes a lot more 'effect' imparted to it to perform. One
actually has to bear down on the ball such that it takes little hops on
its way down to the end rail. Otherwise a lot of the applied English
gets removed by the cloth and the shot fails. It is usually about two or
three little bounces that psuedo-float the ball down the table.