I’m building a ping pong shooter as a summer project, and was wondering how momentum was transferred in a flywheel system.
I’m not sure if i’m supposed to use uniform cicular motion equations or torque and angular velocity equations, and whether i should just use the mass of the wheel or it’s moment of inertia.
Can anyone help?
kevmaniac2000,
Well, I probably could help more effectively if I had a better understanding of how you propose to transfer energy and momentum to the ping pong balls and what you’re trying to predict.
If you’re using something that looks like a paddle wheel or a roulette wheel, i.e., a mechanism in which the ball is synchronized to the wheel’s rotation, and you’re trying to figure out how much energy you’re transferring to the ball, you probably need to focus on the motion of the ball, not the wheel.
If you’re trying to figure out how much the wheel slows when you put a ping pong ball on it, you need to consider the angular moments of inertia of the wheel and the ping pong ball, relative to the axes of rotation. (the two axes may well be the same.)
OTOH, if you’re planning on dropping a ping pong ball onto a rotating disk and trying to predict its behavior, that’ll take more rummaging in my mental attic than I have the time and energy to do this evening.
Good Luck,
Eric