Billiard Ball Physics

Summary

Congratulations! You’ve made it through what will probably be the heaviest math in the book. You now have in your repertoire the methods for handling accurate collision reactions. This is one of the most common things that people write to me asking about. With what you have under your belt right now, you could whip up a pretty decent game of billiards, which would be a fitting thing to do with billiard ball physics! One thing I’ve totally ignored in these examples, just to keep them simple, is the concept of friction. You might want to try adding that into the system. You certainly know enough at this point to do so. You might also want to check out Chapter 19, where I give you a little trick to use in the case that both objects have the same mass.

In the next chapter, I’ll tone things down a bit and look into particle attraction, though adding in some billiard ball physics to the examples there would be quite fitting.