Very silly National Lottery related question.
Discussion
Bear with me...
Waiting for the News tonight, I caught the Lottery draw. As most of you will know, the Lottery is drawn by dropping little numbered rubber balls into a drum with a rotating arm inside. The idea is that the arm muddles the order of the balls, a job it does very effectively. My question is: why?
As I say, bear with me...
The balls always drop into the drum in the same order. The rotating arm always starts in the same position, accelerates at the same rate to the same speed. It always impacts the balls with the same force and the balls always have the same nature (weight, material etc). Why then, given that everything is the same every time, do the balls react differently?
If I take a tennis ball and drop it 1000 times from the same height, onto the same surface in air that's the same density etc, it'll bounce to the same height. That's how physics works. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
What's the craic?
Waiting for the News tonight, I caught the Lottery draw. As most of you will know, the Lottery is drawn by dropping little numbered rubber balls into a drum with a rotating arm inside. The idea is that the arm muddles the order of the balls, a job it does very effectively. My question is: why?
As I say, bear with me...
The balls always drop into the drum in the same order. The rotating arm always starts in the same position, accelerates at the same rate to the same speed. It always impacts the balls with the same force and the balls always have the same nature (weight, material etc). Why then, given that everything is the same every time, do the balls react differently?
If I take a tennis ball and drop it 1000 times from the same height, onto the same surface in air that's the same density etc, it'll bounce to the same height. That's how physics works. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
What's the craic?
Sarkmeister said:
Also, to answer the first questions, to further make the draw more random, the "go" button is pressed at a non specified time after the machine starts spinning. This means the spinning things in the drum aren't always in the same position.
Ah, ok, hadn't spotted this (I've seen the Lottery show perhaps twice in my life).In order to perhaps illicit some further interesting answers, can we please pretend that your version isnt true?
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