- 95-495 Rupak Chatterjee, A.D. Jackson, and N.L. Balazs
- Rigid Body Motion, Interacting Billiards, and
Billiards on Curved Manifolds
(320K, LaTex)
Nov 20, 95
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Abstract. It is shown that the free motion of any three-dimensional
rigid body colliding elastically between two parallel, flat walls
is equivalent to a three-dimensional billiard system. Depending
upon the inertial parameters of the problem, the billiard system
may possess a potential energy field and a non-Euclidean
configuration space. The corresponding curvilinear motion of the
billiard ball does not necessarily lead to a decrease
of the stable periodic orbits found in the analogous
rectilinear system.
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