Billiard dynamics of bouncing dumbbell
arXiv:1306.5201 · doi:10.1016/j.physd.2013.11.007
Abstract
A system of two masses connected with a weightless rod (called dumbbell in this paper) interacting with a flat boundary is considered. The sharp bound on the number of collisions with the boundary is found using billiard techniques. In case, the ratio of masses is large and the dumbbell rotates fast, an adiabatic invariant is obtained.
14 pages, 4 figures