Re: Solving a complicated moving geometry problem ?

[linux guy]

Thank you for your comments.  I'll check the links out.

The problem (in my mind) is that I don't know the trajectory of the ball such that it will strike the surface tangentially.   The string is increasing in length with time.  As it increases in length the contact point moves and the flight time increases.  So I don't have a point on the cylinder from which to calculate a trajectory.

Maybe I just need to sleep on it.  Or solve an easier case first, ie not tangential, and I'll see the solution.

It's just math, after all.

On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 8:13 PM Juan Pablo Carbajal <address@hidden> wrote:

So it seems the ball is following a trajectory that does not depend on
the cylinder.
Hence just turn around the question: given the trajectory of the ball
(that you can solve using an ODE) where can I place a cylinder (with
your constraints) such that its surface is tangential to the
trajectory?
Another easy approach is to conde the crossing of the cylinder surface
by the ball, and the tangential condition as event functions, and add
that to your ODE solver, then search the initial conditions that
trigger the events.
Check https://octave.org/doc/interpreter/Matlab_002dcompatible-solvers.html#Matlab_002dcompatible-solvers
to learn how to use events.