basketball on the moon?

Question

let's say we play basketball on the moon, will the ball accelerate faster or slower when coming down. what about when coming up

there are 2 sides to the story,

the ball would accelerate faster:less air resistance

the ball would accelearte slower: moon has lower gravity and acceleration


so which stand is correct?

Answer 1

Oddly enough, I suspect the dribbling would not be affected much. The force of our hand shoving it down, and the force of the rebound, whch is the result of the balls attempt to return to it's normal shape after being deformed on the floor, are probably more significant then the affects of gravity or air resisance.

Now shooting would be a very different issue. Much less force would be required to make a shot. The potential for a 4 pointer, or even a 5 pointer is quite intriguing. A slam dunk would be a wise move, except 'hanging on the rim' would be used to keep you down, as opposed to keep you up.

All in all, it's a very interesting idea, but I think to make it playable you would need to play in an enclosed space, using the walls to play the ball off of. (Perhaps a Duodecahedron shape?) You could even have more then two teams.

If you're interested in game theory in low or zero G, consider reading the short story Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. There are actually several novels in that series as well, but the short story spends quite a bit of time dealing with strategy and tactics in a ZERO G environment. Obviously the moon has some G, but the concept is still facinating.

Answer 2

Given the shape of a basketball, air resistance is already not a major issue, so it really is based on the gravity difference. Since gravity is pretty much proportional to acceleration (not 100%, but close enough for government work), the rate of the change in velocity with respect to time will be less. Therefore, with the roughly 1/6 surface gravity of the moon when compared to Earth, the acceleration in either direction is less.

Probably a good way to think of it is if you toss the ball up with the same initial velocity that you would on earth, it would go higher on the moon as it isn't being pulled down as quickly. When is strikes the surface, it will do so at roughly the same speed as what you threw it at, but it would take longer to reach that speed and travel farther.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Both of your "2 sides of the story" will have a condition when it predominates. If you dropped the ball from 500 meters on Earth and on the moon and recorded velocity every second, you would find:

* in the early part of the fall, it falls with higher acceleration on the Earth because acceleration due to gravity is higher on Earth.

* toward the end of the fall, it falls with zero acceleration on Earth because it reaches terminal velocity. At high speed, air resistance will balance weight - no net force. On the moon it will continue accelerating all the way to the surface.

If you threw the ball up with high speed in both places it would go higher on the moon for 2 reasons:

*the deceleration would be less on the moon.

*no air resistance on the moon.

Answer 4

The best solution is for you to learn some classical mechanics while keeping this and other questions in mind. Then, you'll be able to figure this out for yourself, along with other, more challenging and more important problems. Questions like this help make a physics class or reading a physics book a fun adventure and a growth experience rather than something you gotta do to graduate. So, do the work that lets you answer these questions, but have lots of fun while you're at it!

Answer 5

Air resistance is a negligible factor when bouncing a ball. If there was no air on earth you would hardly notice the difference in how fast the basketball fell.

The basketball would bounce higher and fall more slowly on the moon.

Answer 6

slower both ways, when the ball is going down, true there isn't an air resistance, but less gravity as well so the ball doesn't feel as much attraction. Comming up the ball will still have to face gravity, true there isn't as much gravity going down, but the ball now has less momentum so it goes slower.