I've just stumbled on some juggling on the One Show where they were exploring…

Colin D Wright - 2016-11-24 20:57:37 UTC - Parent #

> And they also wheeled Colin E. Wright ...

That's Colin *D* Wright ...

> ... out of the Superannuated Jugglers'
> Retirement Castle for yet another free
> lunch.

I'm rather sorry you see me that way.

> ... very odd segment to have on a light
> entertainment show so light that they
> have to peg it down to stop it blowing
> away.

I don't know how much television work you've done, but the producers always have their own agenda, and it can be significant work to make them move away from it. I felt it better to have a hand in moving them away from their original suggestions to have something that at least approximates the physics underlying the difficulties you get when trying to juggle large numbers.

Jack Kalvan's extended essay/thesis[0] was much more comprehensive, but at least this touched on some of the issues, and didn't just say "Ooh, lots of balls. Tricky." I still didn't get half the points I wanted, but it did mention the issues of congestion, and the balance between greater height (which gives you more time, but requires greater accuracy) and faster juggling (which gives you less time, but leaves less time for the balls to deviate off their intended trajectories).

There is so much more, but in a five minute slot intended for a non-juggling, non-technical audience, scripted and produced by non-juggling and non-technical people, I think it's rather better than it might have been.


[0] https://www.juggling.org/papers/OJ/

Cedric Lackpot - 2016-11-27 23:07:58 UTC - Parent #

>> ... out of the Superannuated Jugglers'
>> Retirement Castle for yet another free
>> lunch.

> I'm rather sorry you see me that way.

Oops, rumbled!

Allow me to reveal the other side of the coin :-

I originally saw your site swap lecture at the Mathematical Society at the University of Leicester during, I think, autumn term '89 or '90. It was to my young eyes brilliant and illuminating, and I went home and played with some of the mathematics I understood, and played with the numbers and the diagrams, and experimented with 441 which I seem to remember you cited as a pattern which you had discovered with SS. It was genuinely revelatory and I am grateful to this day for that early introduction to site swap theory.

I then saw your lecture once again at Leicester University in the early or mid noughties, and blow me down, it seemed to me to be very much the same! Well, the same but for the evolution that time and repetition imposes. By the by, that kind of evolution is something that I employed unashamedly during my street theatre career in the early nineties and I think it is a really great way to keep the presentation of material of any kind fresh and engaging, both for audience and performer. I trust you were remunerated for both which prompted my remark about free lunches.

So, whilst I will always remain an irreverant curmudgeon, my bark is essentially worse than my bite and I think it is fair to thank you profusely for the immense contribution you made to my life as a juggler on the occasion of that first lecture. I am also pretty pleased to have seen you popping up on The One Show - bewildered that such a segment should appear on the soufflé-light One Show, but pleased nevertheless. And I was also surprised by the amount of unambiguous science that made it into the final cut, well done, but heaven knows what the man on the Clapham omnibus made of it all.

In short, you have my esteem, and I have a bloody peculiar way of showing it, but there you go. Thank you Colin, please continue to venture from the retirement castle as often as you wish, and if ever our paths should cross again you may tap me up for lunch, you deserve it.

7b_wizard - 2016-11-28 13:59:08 UTC - Parent #

[From the "OJ" article:]  Hand motion must correspond to the positions and velocities of the balls during throws and catches, but I will not analyze this motion in-depth because accurately modeling the dynamics of a human arm would be next to impossible.

That is exactly what would be interesting .. levers, thrust gained by differently long parts of the arm moving together coherently, - and it is engineer's, mathematician's, physicist's, anatomist's, 's and biokinematician's task  ( kinematic chain;   degrees of freedom;   articulated robotic arm;   321 kinemtic structure;   arm solution;   biomechanic ) - it's complex, nonlinear mathematics with more than two variables - applying the law of gravity only isn't the hard part.

Then,  I believe that the hands must conform to the juggling pattern much like an expert typist's hands conform to the keyboard layout. .. Yes, but vice versa: ergonomically designed and shaped keyboards form after how typing is made easiest and least stressing, .. so there might be (I'm sure, there are) options to adapt the pattern to how it's most easily handled with optimally ``relaxed \relaxing´´ movements as much as would go.   #physicalLimits  ( I'm there thinking of e.g. the 3d-component and-or where at all to sustain and `balance´, catchthrow-technique and many more, anything easening the `rolling´of the pattern ).

However, I welcome any effort on revealing the secrets of optimal juggling and attempts to find some notable scientific statements.

Mïark - 2016-10-07 23:29:06 UTC - Parent #

You can see the clip at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b9v31

The Void - 2016-10-08 10:32:08 UTC - Parent #

http://juggling.tv/16119

7b_wizard - 2016-11-28 13:22:28 UTC - Parent #

Sounds perfectly coherent to me ( higher or faster, in theory  or  both, in practise ).

And  half of them hanging there at the top of the pattern, and they all have to miss each other  and  congested top of the arc  get it well IMHO.  ( Also four times the height for the slower tick, tick, tick lol is about in range when not considering (different) dwell-times. )

Then, those 15 maximum number of balls aren't like a ``final verdict´´, but  in theory  projected for Josh's 7 meters height and 8 throws/second speed - so for Barron it'd surely be 19 or 21 (lol?) I reckon.

I enjoyed that vid very much.