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Expert: - 5/8/2009


Question

Elliptipool in the mat
I came across your discussion of the eliptipool http://en.allexperts.com/q/Advanced-Math-1363/Conics.htm while doing a google search for it. I'm attaching a picture of me and my dad playing elliptipool in his math classroom in 1972. He bought the table used from a bar sometime in the 1960s and put it in his classroom to demonstrate the exact principle you discussed in your note - and to keep his students interested in coming back! He had it for over ten years as I recall. Sorry for interrupting you with not a question about advanced math, but I thought you'd be interested. I'm visiting my dad this weekend and showed him your site.
Steve

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Questioner:  Steve
Private: no

Elliptipool in the mathI came across your discussion of the eliptipool http://en.allexperts.com/q/Advanced-Math-1363/Conics.htm while doing a google search for it. I'm attaching a picture of me and my dad playing elliptipool in his math classroom in 1972. He bought the table used from a bar sometime in the 1960s and put it in his classroom to demonstrate the exact principle you discussed in your note - and to keep his students interested in coming back! He had it for over ten years as I recall. Sorry for interrupting you with not a question about advanced math, but I thought you'd be interested. I'm visiting my dad this weekend and showed him your site.
Steve  
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Hi, Steve,

And here I thought for all these years (OK, OK, just since 2007) that you were making it all up.  Nice pioture -- so they really exist.

I wonder, though.  The ellipse properties suggest questions, based on the 'pocket point'.

Here is one:

Is there a pocket-point which is not reachable by any one-wall shot from an arbitrary point inside the ellipse?  [Obviously you can always just hit the ball right in.]

Good shootings.  
    Questioner's Rating
    Rating(1-10)Knowledgeability = 10Clarity of Response = 10Politeness = 10
    CommentThanks - and I believe that the ball placed on any point on the table, and aimed at a point on the wall collinear with the focus spot, will go in the hole. For every point on the table, there is a point that intersects the line through spot and ball, so I think there are no "dead points". (I confirmed this with Dad, by the way, who wishes he knew the current whereabouts of the table!)


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Paul Klarreich

Expertise

I can answer questions in basic to advanced algebra (theory of equations, complex numbers), precalculus (functions, graphs, exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions and identities), basic probability, and finite mathematics, including mathematical induction. I can also try (but not guarantee) to answer questions on Abstract Algebra -- groups, rings, etc. and Analysis -- sequences, limits, continuity. I won't understand specialized engineering or business jargon.

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I taught at a two-year college for 25 years, including all subjects from algebra to third-semester calculus.

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