I learned to juggle 3 balls when I was about 10. Its a great trick when you are 10 but it really comes in handy when you are a parent as endless entertainment for your kids. But now mine are getting bored and they are demanding 5 balls. Juggling 5 balls is pretty close to impossible. But with a little technology, learning to juggle 5 could be easy.
What I want is a ball that is sturdy enough for juggling but can be filled with helium in varying concentrations. Juggling a helium-filled ball would be something like juggling in low gravity. Which means the balls would fall slowly and 5 balls would be easy. With just the right concentration of helium, anyone could do it. Then, the helium concentration is gradually reduced. At each step, the difficulty increases just a little bit making it easier to master juggling the heavier and heavier balls. Finally, its all atmospheric air, and you are juggling 5 balls in no time.
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April 12, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Fmb
You need density similar to air to get your antigrav effect, which leaves you subject to other annoying forces, I suspect.
April 12, 2009 at 10:36 pm
lee kaufman
The problem here is going to be catching your balls.
April 14, 2009 at 11:01 pm
jeff
what about a ball with a rigid, but lightweight skin so that the density of the air inside does not make it squishy?
April 13, 2009 at 9:41 am
Paul
I don’t think this would make juggling five balls easy. As someone who can juggle five balls, I started with bean-bag type balls, then as soon as I got a handle on how to hold them all and get them up in the air with the right timing (timing is the key to 5 because there isn’t much room for error), I actually went the other way and used weighted tennis balls for juggling. They were 1-2 kilos each but every additional catch you learn to do seems to add two additional catches with regular balls.
April 14, 2009 at 11:03 pm
jeff
why would it not be easier to have all the balls moving in slow motion?
August 5, 2009 at 2:48 am
Paul
I am not exactly sure, but I do know that when I juggle 5 balls, it is easier to juggle things that are in a certain weight range. I think the lighter they are the harder it is to control their trajectory accurately because they are more easily effected by the wind resistance – consider how easy it is to throw a baseball through a tire swing and compare it to a baseball-sized balloon. Another possibility is that humans have force-dependent mechanical precision and throwing light objects accurately is more difficult than it would be for heavier objects.
If they were just normal balls moving in slow motion, it might be easier to juggle them (it would likely be more difficult for me because I am used to juggling them at normal speed, but that rule wouldn’t hold for others), but I do not think that lighter balls are just slower versions of heavy balls.
August 12, 2009 at 1:44 pm
hehe
…. balls
August 12, 2009 at 3:00 pm
jeff
settle down beavis.
March 4, 2010 at 5:37 pm
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November 13, 2014 at 4:26 am
David Bandel
I just had this same exact idea: helium filled balls where you gradually increase the weight.
Luckily I can already juggle normally. But this idea of mine would be a great way to teach someone who was new to it.