The Minimum Height of a Strike Point for a Follow Shot with a Billiard Ball By: Yong Kyung Jo | Art By: Lilian Kong
Introduction
Billiards is an easily accessible sport that is favored by many people. I myself enjoy billiards, and regularly go to the billiard room at least twice a week. In billiards, one hits a ball with a long stick known as a cue. Skills for playing billiards revolve around hitting the exact location on the ball (called the strike point), hitting with precise thickness, and hitting with an appropriate amount of force. All of these factors act together to lead to a successful billiard shot, and among them, this paper will focus on how to aim and hit at the exact strike point. This focus can be justified by the fact that all techniques in billiards require preciseness in aiming and striking. There are a variety of techniques in billiards (examples would be follow shots, draw shots, and masse etc.), and while all of these techniques seem almost physically impossible, the fundamental principle is that they all require one to hit at the exact strike point. In other words, the rotation that a strike gives to the ball changes its direction and course, which makes it the most important factor when performing various skills in billiards. Among all of these, let’s first take a look at follow shots. In order to perform a follow shot in a desired direction, hence, in order to have a ball proceed in a specific direction even after colliding with another ball, what kind of conditions should
be met? The answer to this question would be that the billiard ball requires an advancement of rotations, meaning that the ball needs to roll across the billiard table without sliding. This is what allows for the ball to proceed in direction the player intends to send it. By intuition, it’s possible to see that a ball will roll by hitting at a point higher than its midpoint. However, the occurrence of a slide may be the cause of the ball being unable to head in the desired direction, and thus results in a missed shot. Consequently, this research aims to find the minimum height of a strike point that will allow the ball to roll without sliding.
Image 1: Billiard ball 16 | JOURNYS | FALL 2020
