
The Physics and Physicality of Extreme Juggling - ColinWright
https://www.wired.com/story/the-physicsand-physicalityof-extreme-juggling/
======
weinzierl
I find it a bit amusing that the headline uses the term _" Extreme Juggling"_.
Not because it's too clickbaity, but I think the juggling community should
have invented that name. _" I'm going to an extreme juggling event."_ sounds
much better than the dull _" numbers juggling"_.

On the other hand it wouldn't have done much to make numbers juggling more
popular. If we are honest it is a quite disappointing subject to anyone
outside the juggling community. Ask some random person what they believe about
how many objects an average juggler can keep in air and you will get answers
from 10 to 20. The reality looks more like this [1]:

    
    
        Balls    People
        3        200M
        4        5M
        5        500K 
        6        50K
        7        10K
        8        1K
        9        200
       10        40
       11        10
       12        2
    

And these numbers are for throwing and catching just _once_.

The hard reality of every juggler is just: Do a few simple three ball tricks
and people will get excited, show them your five ball routine they will fall
asleep.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/juggling/comments/2mfurs/how_many_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/juggling/comments/2mfurs/how_many_people_in_the_world_can_do_five_balls/)

(3 years old and the top numbers obsoleted by the OP)

~~~
dasil003
I'm a little surprised the fall off from 3-4 is four times more than 4-5.
After half a year of practice I could sustain a 4-fountain. A couple decades
later I think I've still never hit more than 20 catches on a 5-cascade. But I
guess if we're talking about _flashing_ 3, that's a pretty low bar.

~~~
taeric
The rhythm for juggling 3 is fairly straight forward for me. I confess I have
not looked at what the equivalent for 4 would be. It seems clearly different
in a way that practicing 3 doesn't help get to 4.

~~~
ColinWright
Four is genuinely different, but there are now many, _many_ exercises you can
do with three which once mastered that makes four almost trivial once
mastered.

The same is true with going from four to five, _etc._

~~~
taeric
Have a link to some of these exercises? I'll have to give this another shot.
:)

~~~
ColinWright
Here are the first few exercises, all for while juggling 3. In all of the
following X and Y should be taken as all possible combinations of Left and
Right.

* Throw really high from hand X, catch in hand Y, and carry on;

* Throw one from hand X, hold up the ball in hand not(X), catch ball back in hand X and carry on;

* Do that twice in a row with the same hand;

* Do it with the left, then immediately with the right;

* Do it with the right, then immediately the left;

Email me when you've done all those a minimum of 10 times each.

Do you know SiteSwaps?

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dahart
There’s an interesting surprise: the Shannon Juggling Theory.

> By building on the juggling theory of Claude Shannon (yes, that Claude
> Shannon—the father of information theory was also an avid juggler), Kalvan's
> studies detail the ways that juggling more balls requires a simultaneous
> increase in the height, frequency, and precision of one's throws.

~~~
agumonkey
I guess he saw vertical space as channel capacity

~~~
dahart
LOL, but I bet you’re right!

I was just thinking about the relationship between gravity, and throwing &
catching juggling balls vs. the weight of the balls. The apex height & number
of balls determines the juggling frequency. Or, a frequency & number of balls
determines the height. Fix any two, the third falls out.

Some important constraints are that holding a weight in your hand reduces your
acceleration, and that at a fixed juggling frequency, doubling the number of
balls requires a 4x increase in the apex height. (Shannon might say that
channel capacity is proportional to the square root of apex height at a given
juggling frequency).

In the video, Kalvan measures Barron shaking his arms twice as fast (without
holding any weight), but appears to jump to the conclusion that it means he
might be able to juggle twice as many balls. They speculate that accuracy
might be the reason that Barron doesn’t achieve his physical potential. But
since the weight of the balls slows down the max juggling frequency, and since
adding more balls means throwing quadratically higher, Barron could be right,
that it may require more strength than he has.

~~~
agumonkey
A teacher told us that in the 80s they used sat links as memory.. a bit like
delay line memories, but in atmosphere. Quite mindblowing for my college me.

~~~
jacquesm
EME has been used like this as well.

~~~
agumonkey
> EME

electromagnetic energy ?

~~~
jacquesm
Earth-Moon-Earth, sorry, jargon.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Moon%E2%80%93Ear...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%E2%80%93Moon%E2%80%93Earth_communication)

~~~
agumonkey
yeah, you're excused, because the idea is so funky I'm too excited to bother
:)

~~~
jacquesm
If that excites you how about this: Sending data into space with an
omnidirectional antenna will sooner or later return the signal back to earth.
That would be pretty long term storage and the access times would be horrible
but it's an interesting idea. Hm, someone should do this with that scientific
papers archive :)

------
jacquesm
No thread about juggling should be without a link to Anthony Gatto's story:

[http://grantland.com/features/anthony-gatto-juggling-
cirque-...](http://grantland.com/features/anthony-gatto-juggling-cirque-du-
soleil-jason-fagone/)

~~~
jpatokal
Previously discussed on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7671214)

------
sarreph
Tangent, but just wanted to thank you, Colin, for piquing my interest in Maths
at a talk you held when I was at school. It was maybe a decade ago now, but
putting 2 and 2 together and seeing you on HN is a very surreal thing indeed!

~~~
ColinWright
Very kind - thank you. Feel free to email me to get/be/stay in touch, and to
let me know what you're doing.

~~~
nightcracker
I loved your appearance on Numberphile :)

~~~
ColinWright
Wow - thank you! That video should get to 200K views by the end of the year -
fingers crossed. Not as many as other Numberphile videos, but pretty good. It
was disappointing that it got basically zero reaction here on HN, but <fx:
shrug />

I might submit it again ... it has been eight months.

------
mhh__
Extreme juggling makes me think of
[https://youtu.be/hFP4C0PQ4jU](https://youtu.be/hFP4C0PQ4jU)

~~~
gus_massa
It's a very strange sport. More info:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_(juggling)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_\(juggling\))

------
foreigner
Pro tip: if you do a juggling trick and then your audience asks "How many was
that?" You should always add _at least_ two to the actual number.

