Grip-slip behavior of a bouncing ball

Measurements of the normal reaction force and the friction force acting on an obliquely bouncing ball were made to determine whether the friction force acting on the ball is due to sliding, rolling, or static friction. At low angles of incidence to the horizontal, a ball incident without spin will slide throughout the bounce. At higher angles of incidence, elementary bounce models predict that the ball will start to slide, but will then commence to roll if the point of contact on the circumference of the ball momentarily comes to rest on the surface. Measurements of the friction force and ball spin show that real balls do not roll when they bounce. Instead, the deformation of the contact region allows a ball to grip the surface when the bottom of the ball comes to rest on the surface. As a result the ball vibrates in the horizontal direction causing the friction force to reverse direction during the bounce. The spin of the ball was found to be larger than that due to the friction force alone, a result that can be explained if the normal reaction force acts vertically through a point behind the center of the ball. © 2002 American Association of Physics Teachers. @DOI: 10.1119/1.1507792#