The Solid and Hollow Ball
Classical Mechanics
Level
1
We have two identical balls in terms of diameter and weight. However, one of them is solid and the other is hollow.
Without knocking the ball, can you find the solid ball?
No
Yes
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
Release both of the balls at the top of an incline and the one that reaches the bottom first will be the solid ball.
The solid ball has a smaller moment of inertia and hence less mechanical energy is spent on rotating the ball and therefore it will reach earlier.