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Originally Posted by John Neun
I have been very puzzled about our shooting tests. Why does the ball perform better when it is highly compressed through the shooter? We are zeroing in on a single wheel pitching machine, by the way.
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We have been testing the same mechanism and discovered much the same effect (more highly compressed balls shoot significantly faster). I believe this is due to slippage when the normal force is not high enough. Though it may not seem that the ball should slip, consider the short time that the ball spends being accelerated (our video analysis suggests that the ball is in contact with the wheel and track (8" wheel with 90deg track) for less than .1 seconds).