Answer to the Question 05/96

The question was:
When hockey puck is sliding on the ice it usually performs both linear motion (translation) and rotation. One notices, that the rotation stops exactly at the same moment as the center of mass comes to rest, i.e. the translation ends. Why?


(10/03) Ivan Sirakov from CNRS, St Etienne, France (e-mail Yvan.Sirakov@univ-st-etienne.fr) submitted (28/8/03) solution that apears in the following pdf file, as well as ilustration of the process that can be found in the zipped avi file. He essentially provides a complete solution of the problem.

In fact this problem was considered in the literature, quite some time ago. K. Volyenli and E. Eriksen analysed the motion in the article apearing in the American Journal of Physics 53, 1149 (1985). See a copy of this article in PDF format.
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