Why does a rolling ball slow down and stop on its own?
The Ball's Long Goodbye
Why does a rolling ball slow down and stop on its own?
Give a ball a good push across the floor, and it rolls... and rolls... and then, quietly, it stops. Nobody touched it. Nobody yelled "Halt!" So who, exactly, told it to quit?
Here's the surprising part. A ball doesn't actually want to stop. If you could find a perfectly smooth, empty place with nothing in its way, that ball would keep rolling forever. Moving is the ball's natural state. Stopping is the weird thing that needs explaining.
