Group 2

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Chaos in Plinko

Inspired by the game Plinko featured on the popular American television gameshow The Price is Right, we set out to model the chaotic behavior of a sphere under the influence of gravity traveling through and colliding with a regularly spaced lattice of cylindrical wooden pegs.

Background

Chaos in these sort of systems...

Experiment

Our experimental protocol consists of two parts. A physical modeling and analysis with a plinko board constructed of low cost material and simple point tracking with labview and matlab. The second is a simulation cooked in Matlab to study the dynamics of the system upon simple changes in parameters.

Physical model

The constructed plinko board will be built from low cost materials. Wood is an easy choice for the back of the board, while a clear plexiglass front will be necessary to track the path of a sphere upon entering the lattice of pegs. A ping pong ball is chosen due to its low cost, and light weight.

Matlab simulation