The Mathematics of a Ball Bouncing Down a Staircase
The beauty of modeling movement with math
I recently tackled this applied mathematics problem and was quite delighted with the beauty of the answer so I thought I would share my approach to it.
The problem involves a particle being launched off the top of a staircase and bouncing progressively down, hitting each step once. It’s a classic movement we’ve all seen in our day to day lives, so modelling it with math is a fun challenge. Of course, we will use classical mechanics here and we will ignore messy stuff like air resistance and friction, so the answer is a bit idealistic, but still very pretty I think.
The problem
A straight staircase consists of N smooth horizontal stairs, each of height h above the next stair. A particle slides over the top stair at speed U, with velocity perpendicular to the edge of the stair, and then falls down the staircase, bouncing once on every stair. The coefficient of restitution between the particle and each stair is e, where e﹤ 1.
- Find an expression for the horizontal distance travelled between the n-th and (n+1)-th bounce
- If N is very large and L is the length of each step of the staircase, find an expression for U.
Drawing a diagram
