I was holding a rubber band ball in my hand earlier and tossing it up in the air at about eye level. I noticed that I could see the shape of individual rubber bands on the axis of rotation on the outside of the ball but the edges of the ball were blurry. This got me thinking.. is a ball spinning slower near the axis than it is at the outer edge? Is the earth spinning faster at the equator than it is at the poles? If speed is d/t then the math makes sense to a layman like me that the ball would be rotating slower at the center and faster on the edges. Please help.
edit: holy shit. balls are fascinating.
In: 439
Interestingly- **not always!**
there’s a way to show this- get a superball, and throw it so it under a coffee table at about 45 degrees… it will bounce off the floor, hit the underside of the table, and come back out on your side. Seems weird as hell.
the ball twists itself up inside when it hits the floor, and then untwists, so it has backspin when it hits the table, so it comes back towards you.
When it’s untwisting, the inside has a different rotational speed to the outside.
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