Results in Physics 1 (2011) 36–39

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Results in Physics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rinp

Newtonian versus general-relativistic prediction for the trajectory

of a bouncing ball system
Shiuan-Ni Liang, Boon Leong Lan ⇑
School of Science, Monash University, 46150 Bandar Sunway, Selangor, Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The dynamics of a bouncing ball undergoing repeated inelastic impact with a sinusoidally-oscillating
Received 20 September 2011 table is studied numerically. For the ball bouncing at low speed in a weak gravitational field, we show,
Accepted 17 October 2011 contrary to expectation, that the trajectories predicted by Newtonian mechanics and general-relativistic
Available online 25 October 2011
mechanics from the same parameters and initial conditions will rapidly disagree completely if the trajec-
tories are chaotic. When the two theories predict completely different chaotic trajectories for a low-speed
Keywords: weak-gravity system, we expect the general-relativistic prediction is empirically correct since general
Bouncing ball
relativity continues to be verified in recent high-precision experiments.
Newtonian mechanics
General-relativistic mechanics
Ó 2011 Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Low speed
Weak gravity
Chaos

1. Introduction co-ordinate system with velocities which are small compared

For dynamical systems where gravity does not play a dynamical
role, it is expected [1–4] that if the speed of the system is low (i.e.,
much less than the speed of light c), the motion predicted by spe-
cial-relativistic mechanics is always well approximated by the
motion predicted by Newtonian mechanics from the same param-
eters and initial conditions. This expectation was however recently
[5–8] shown to be false. In particular, it was shown that the trajec-
tories predicted by the two theories will rapidly diverge and bear
no resemblance to each other if the trajectories are chaotic. The
agreement could also break down for non-chaotic trajectories but
it is not as rapid. Rapid breakdown of agreement between Newto-
nian and quantum trajectories was also found previously [9–11]
for the system studied in [5].
For dynamical systems where gravity does play a dynamical
role but only weakly (i.e., gravitational potential  c2 [12]), it is
expected that the motion predicted by general-relativistic
mechanics for a slow-moving dynamical system is always well
approximated by the motion predicted by Newtonian mechanics
from the same parameters and initial conditions. For example,
according to Einstein [1]:
If we confine the application of the theory [general relativity] to
the case where the gravitational fields can be regarded as
being weak, and in which all masses move with respect to the
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: lan.boon.leong@monash.edu (B.L. Lan).
with the velocity of light, we then obtain as a first approxima-
tion the Newtonian theory.
According to Lapidus [13]:
For weak fields and low velocities the Newtonian limit is
obtained.
The motion of Mercury is an example of a low-speed weak-gravity
[14] motion where the difference between the Newtonian and gen-
eral-relativistic predictions is [15] very small. Another example,
given by Lapidus [13], is the low-speed motion of a body in a uni-
form but weak gravitational field.
However, we show in this paper with the bouncing ball system
that the expected agreement between the Newtonian and general-
relativistic predicted trajectories for a low-speed weak-gravity
dynamical system can break down. Details of the bouncing ball
system and calculations are given in Section 2, and the results
are presented and discussed in Section 3. The significance of our
finding is discussed in the concluding Section 4.
2. Bouncing ball system
In the bouncing ball system [16,17], the ball undergoes repeated
impact with a table which is oscillating vertically in a sinusoidal
fashion with amplitude A and angular frequency x. The impact
between the ball and the table is instantaneous and inelastic,
where the coefficient of restitution a (0 6 a < 1) is a measure of

2211-3797 Ó 2011 Elsevier B.V. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.

doi:10.1016/j.rinp.2011.10.001
 S.-N. Liang, B.L. Lan / Results in Physics 1 (2011) 36–39 37

(    )
the energy lost of the ball at each impact. The table is not affected c2 1 2Bk g
by the impact because the table’s mass is much larger than the 1 þ sin ðhkþ1  h k Þ þ H k 1
2g 2B2k cx
ball’s mass. In between impacts, the ball moves in a uniform grav-
itational field since the vertical distance travelled is much less than  A½sinðhkþ1 Þ þ 1 ¼ 0 ð3Þ
the Earth’s radius. where
Following [16,17], we will use the ball’s velocity v and the ta-
ble’s phase h just after each impact to describe the motion of the Hk ¼ sin1 ð2B2k sk  1Þ;
bouncing ball. The table’s phase h is given by (xt + h0) modulus sk  b2k
2p. We will refer to the table’s phase just after each impact as B2k ¼ ;
s2k
the impact phase.
In the Newtonian framework, the dynamics of the bouncing ball 2gA½sinðhk Þ þ 1
sk ¼ 1 þ ;
is [16,17] exactly described by the impact phase map c2
vk
   2 bk ¼ ;
1 1 1 c
A½sinðhk Þ þ 1 þ v k ðhkþ1  hk Þ  g ðhkþ1  hk Þ
x 2 x and the velocity map
 A½sinðhkþ1 Þ þ 1 ¼ 0 ð1Þ v0 ukþ1
c2 aðc2 kþ1
v0 u
Þ þ ukþ1
kþ1 kþ1
and the velocity map v kþ1 ¼ 0 v
ukþ1
ð4Þ
   1  au ð
kþ1
kþ1 c2  0 u v Þ
kþ1 kþ1
1
v kþ1 ¼ ð1 þ aÞxA cosðhkþ1 Þ  a v k  g ðhkþ1  hk Þ ð2Þ
x where
where g is the acceleration due to gravity. ukþ1 ¼ Ax cosðhkþ1 Þ
In the general-relativistic framework, the dynamics of the
bouncing ball is exactly described by the impact phase map is the table’s velocity just after the (k + 1)th impact, and

0.124

0.123
impact phase

0.122

0.121

0.120

0.119
0 5 10 15 20
impact

8.22

8.20

8.18
velocity

8.16

8.14

8.12
0 5 10 15 20
impact

Fig. 1. Comparison of the Newtonian and general-relativistic trajectories for a non-chaotic case: normalized impact phases (top) and velocities (bottom). Newtonian (general-
relativistic) values are plotted with triangles (diamonds).
38 S.-N. Liang, B.L. Lan / Results in Physics 1 (2011) 36–39

c 2Bk g In the first case, the Newtonian and general-relativistic trajecto-

v 0kþ1 ¼ cos½ ðhkþ1  hk Þ þ Hk 
2Bk cx ries are both non-chaotic. Fig. 1 shows that the general-relativistic
trajectory is well-approximated by the Newtonian trajectory. The
is the ball’s velocity just before the (k + 1)th impact. Our derivation
two trajectories converge to period one fixed points which are
of the general-relativistic map [Eqs. (3) and (4)] for the bouncing
almost identical.
ball is similar to the derivation [16] of the Newtonian map [Eqs.
In the second case, the Newtonian and general-relativistic tra-
(1) and (2)] where we utilized Lapidus’ result [13] for the general-
jectories are both chaotic. Fig. 2 shows that the two trajectories
relativistic motion of a body in a uniform gravitational field.
are close to each other for a while but they are completely different
The impact phase maps, Eqs. (1) and (3), which are implicit alge-
after 21 impacts although the speeds are low and gravity is weak.
braic equations for hk+1, must be solved numerically by finding the zero
Fig. 3 shows that the rapid breakdown of agreement between the
of the function on the left side of the equation given hk and vk. We use
Newtonian and general-relativistic trajectories is due to the, on
the fzero function in MATLAB for this purpose. Numerical accuracy of
average, exponential growth of the magnitude of the difference be-
the solutions was carefully checked by varying the tolerances.
tween the two trajectories for at least the first 21 impacts:

3. Results D/n  D/1 ec1 ðn1Þ ð5Þ

In the following two examples, the parameters of the bouncing ball
system are: g = 981 cm/s2, c = 2.998  103cm/s (we have to use an arti-
ficially smaller c value for accurate numerical calculation of the gen-
eral-relativistic map), table’s frequency (x/2p) = 60 Hz, and a = 0.5.
The initial conditions are 8.17001 cm/s for the ball’s velocity and
0.12001 for the normalized impact phase (i.e., impact phase divided
by 2p). The table’s amplitude A is however slightly different in the
two cases: 0.01 cm in the first case, 0.012 cm in the second case. In each
case, the ball’s speed and table’s speed remained low (about 103c)
and gravity is weak (gravitational potential gy is about 106c2).
Dv n  Dv 1 ec2 ðn1Þ ð6Þ
where n = 1, 2,. . .. The exponential growth constants for the normal-
ized-impact-phase difference in Eq. (5) and velocity difference in
Eq. (6) are close to each other (c1  0.41 and c2  0.41), and also
close to the exponential growth constant (0.38) for the magnitude
of the difference between the chaotic Newtonian trajectory and
another initially-nearby Newtonian trajectory (the two Newtonian
trajectories differed by 1011 in the normalized impact phase
initially). All the growth constants above were obtained from
straight line fit to the natural-log of the data for the first 26 impacts.

0.8
impact phase

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0 10 20 30 40
impact

11

10

9
velocity

4
0 10 20 30 40
impact

Fig. 2. Comparison of the Newtonian and general-relativistic trajectories for a chaotic case: normalized impact phases (top) and velocities (bottom). Newtonian (general-
relativistic) values are plotted with triangles (diamonds).
 S.-N. Liang, B.L. Lan / Results in Physics 1 (2011) 36–39 39

-2

ln(impact phase difference)

-4

-6

-8

-10

-12

-14
0 10 20 30 40 50
impact

0
ln(velocity difference)

-2

-4

-6

-8

-10
0 10 20 30 40 50
impact

Fig. 3. Natural-log of the magnitude of the difference between the Newtonian and general-relativistic trajectories for the chaotic case in Fig. 2: normalized impact phase
(top), velocity (bottom). Solid lines are straight-line fits.

4. Conclusion and significance References

For a slow-moving dynamical system where gravity is weak, we
have shown, contrary to expectation (for example, [1,13]), that the
trajectories predicted by Newtonian mechanics and general-rela-
tivistic mechanics from the same parameters and initial conditions
will rapidly disagree completely if the trajectories are chaotic be-
cause the difference between the trajectories grows exponentially
on average. However, for this dissipative system, if the Newtonian
and general-relativistic trajectories are non-chaotic, there is no
breakdown of agreement.
When the two theories, Newtonian and general-relativistic
mechanics, predict completely different chaotic trajectories for a
low-speed weak-gravity dynamical system, which of the two predic-
tions is physically correct? The bouncing ball system could be real-
ized experimentally [16–18] to answer this important fundamental
question. However, since general relativity continues to be verified
in recent high-precision experiments (see [14,19,20] for reviews),
we expect the general-relativistic prediction is empirically correct.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by a Fundamental Research Grant
Scheme, FRGS/2/2010/ST/MUSM/02/1.
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