lacrosse ball bounce

[Amer Mallah]

Help me settle a debate with a friend:

My friend insists that lacrosse balls bounce in a unique matter
because they are rubber with a solid metal core. The unique spin is
due to the fact that metal has more elasticity than rubber and this
difference is what makes the weird bounce.

I think that a lacrosse ball is solid rubber and that this whole
metallic elasticity thing is something he made up. Please blast me or
him. :)

thanks!
amer

[Gerald R. Martin]

I can't speak for all lacrosse balls, but the two or three that I've sawn
in half were quite homogeneous, unsullied by non-rubber materials.

What do you find weird about their bounce, BTW?

-Jerry M.

In article <pi3gjtoi2ce2llp2p...@4ax.com>, Amer Mallah

[Patrick Cochran]

>
> What do you find weird about their bounce, BTW?
>

If you've ever played lacrosse, rather than just
juggled lax balls, you would think the bounce was
weird too...they do some crazy stuff, it's really
unpredictable, although I think that has more to
do with the way they come out of the cradle than
with the actual properties of the ball. And,
having been hit in a not too friendly spot with a
weird-spinning, unpredictably-bouncing lacrosse
ball I can tell you that it's not made of metal
(or I'd be dead) but that it is, nonetheless,
EXTREMELY hard.
HTH
Pat

[John Prussing]

>thanks!
>amer

Unless the ball has changed from when I played lacrosse years ago,
it is solid rubber. The weird bounce is due to the spin on the
ball, similar to a tennis ball. There can be topspin, sidespin,
or backspin, depending on how the ball was released from the
stick. In tennis this can be controlled by the manner in which
the ball is hit, e.g., stroking the racquet from high to low imparts
backspin, causing a non-true bounce. My distant recollection of lacrosse
is that it is not easy to intentionally impart a particular spin,
but maybe I wasn't skilled enough. We were only an Division III NCAA
team. But any spin causes the goalkeeper problems when the ball bounces
in front of him or her.
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
John E. Prussing
Dept. of Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://www.uiuc.edu/~prussing
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

[Rich Shumaker]

I was told the bounce of the lacrosse ball is odd because it has an off
center core material. This core causes the ball to bounce in odd
directions.

Rich Shumaker
The Other Contact Juggler
Ri...@ContactJuggling.com
www.ContactJuggling.com

[Mark Jeffcoat]

As someone raised in the Western tradition of scientific inquiry,
I have some thoughts about how to settle this debate. All of them
involve a sharp knife, and a lacrosse ball that neither of you
have any emotional attachment to.

--
Mark Jeffcoat

[Joe Geluso]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001 00:26:03 -0400, Amer Mallah <sn...@greenmount.org>
wrote:

>I think that a lacrosse ball is solid rubber

http://www.lacrosse.org/mens_rules.html

The Ball:
The ball must be made of solid rubber and can
be white, yellow or orange. The
ball is 7.75 - 8 inches in circumference and
5 - 5.25 ounces.

On the other hand, the standard spec for baseballs doesn't allow for
them being made with compacted sawdust cores, plastic covers, etc.,
but they used to be sold (maybe they still are?). They didn't stay
spherical for very long.

How a lacrosse ball is constructed probably depends on how official
the particular ball is.

HTH

Joe Geluso

[Michael Groszek]

Mark Jeffcoat wrote:
>
> In rec.juggling Amer Mallah <sn...@greenmount.org> wrote:
> > Help me settle a debate with a friend:
>
> > My friend insists that lacrosse balls bounce in a unique matter
> > because they are rubber with a solid metal core. The unique spin is
> > due to the fact that metal has more elasticity than rubber and this
> > difference is what makes the weird bounce.
>
> > I think that a lacrosse ball is solid rubber and that this whole
> > metallic elasticity thing is something he made up. Please blast me or
> > him. :)
>

First of all, the rubber is a few orders of magnitude (2-3) *more*
elastic than the metal.
That doesn't give his theory much credibility does it?

[Dan Higgins]

The answer to the lacrosse ball question is that the ball is made from SOLID
rubber. There is no core that makes it bounce funny.

The Higgins Brothers
(pro jugglers and lacrosse players)

www.higginsbrothers.com

--
Mark Jeffcoat <jeff...@alumni.rice.edu> wrote in message
news:W_r_6.102206$tb6.25...@typhoon.austin.rr.com...

[Roger W. C. Hansen]

>> > Help me settle a debate with a friend:
>>
>> > My friend insists that lacrosse balls bounce in a unique matter
>> > because they are rubber with a solid metal core. The unique spin is
>> > due to the fact that metal has more elasticity than rubber and this
>> > difference is what makes the weird bounce.
>>

I would like to know what is "unique" or "weird" about the
way a lacrosse ball bounces. All the lacrosse balls that I have
observed to date bounce like normal rubber balls. It seems to me
that if there was really something "weird" about them, jugglers
would not use them. They are popular because they bounce repeatably
and stably in the hands of bounce jugglers. If they did not, they
would not be very popular.

[stinkbutt]

My lacrosse balls are solid rubber
*-Stinkbutt-*
-*-*0o0o0*-*-