[dan2915]

Looks good, though I'm not so sure about the non-slip assumption. The ball would have to be instantaneously accelerated to the speed of the wheel. One other factor that an energy-argument doesn't take into account is the compression on the ball. My team has found that greater compression on the ball usually increases range.

I created a MATLAB script that takes these into account, but since we haven't really verified any of the numbers that it produces and I'm a bit unsure of some of the assumptions, I'm going to pass it by my physics professor first before I post it.