How many times do I have to throw a tennis ball at a wall before it goes through it?

Question

It's a hypothetical question about quantum tunneling. Is there any was to calculate an approximate number? 100 trillion, a nonillion?

Answer 1

Well there is a chance that it will sail right through the wall but because of its mass the probability is very low. Your answer lies near infinite throws before the ball has any reasonable chance of passing through. How ever if we set the up on the quantum level the is a much greater chance that this could occur. No there is not any way to calculate this number of times throwing because of some of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics.

Answer 2

Don't think that will happen. Depends on what kind of wall really. If you're talking about concrete it just won't happen. Tennis balls go through what we call elastic collisions and thus most of the energy gets converted into kinetic motion which is why they bounce back. So little energy is transferred to the wall itself to break it. You gotta throw hard something like an iron ball to have some hope of breaking it because such objects go through inelastic collisions and thus most of its energy gets transferred into the wall itself. If enough is transferred onto the wall it would then break.

Of course speed matters as well. If you were to fire the tennis ball at a really high speed onto the wall the ball might just disintegrate altogether. The wall might be cracked though but a ball just ain't hard enough to punch through a concrete wall. (Unless you're talking about a really thin wall).

Answer 3

I would have to say at speeds approaching light speed, you would only need one time. Although the tennis ball is soft and compressible at slower speeds at extremely high speeds the mass of the ball would punch through the wall. There used to be an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in Springfield, IL that has a piece of hay piercing through the trunk of a tree that was found after a tornado. Common sense would tell you that the hay should have disintegrated when it hit the trunk of the tree but at high speed the straw displaced the tree material. That's my take on it but I have been wrong before. :)

Answer 4

If you throw a ball to the wall every second, you would need to wait more than the current age of the universe to get a good chance to make it happen.

Answer 5

Well... certainly the serve is important, especially in team tennis, where you have to have a dependable second serve, but I think you have to ask yourself first, "Do I really want a perfect serve?" I have seen the best pros double faulting in key-points, and yet according to research by Vic Braden, Jimmy Connors thought that his serve was lousy, but everybody agrees that his serve was the most important part of his game, not to mention his return of serve...

Answer 6

well iwould say the tennisball would fall apart before you put a hole in a good solid wall

Answer 7

Keep throwing. Let me know when you find out.

Answer 8

Just until you aim at the open window in the wall?

Answer 9

987654321 times

Answer 10

depends how hard you are thowing it