Re(2): “Cold” jai alai balls Posted on November 29, 2025 at 08:38:12 AM by newdan
Greetings from Fabulous western New York (WNY) !
I hope all the "Chalkies" had a nice Thanksgiving holiday.
I ate leftovers all day yesterday and will probably have some today but pizza, wings and cured Italian cold cuts are on the menu for the Bills and Steelers game tomorrow.
In engineering terms :
The thermal coefficient of expansion is a measure of how much a material will expand or contract for each degree of temperature change with the value for a virgin rubber strand jai alia ball being approximately 180 to 260 - 10^(-6) K - not considering the effects of the goat-skin cover.
In layman terms :
The warmer the ball the more it will bounce (and there may also be changes in the shape (and/or dimensions)) of the ball.
Hockey pucks are frozen before a game to reduce the bounce and this also reduces friction as the puck will lay flatter on the ice.
Does anybody know if there a regulation temperature for jai alia balls at the start of a match ?
Has anybody ever measured the changes in the temperature of the jai alia ball over the course of a match ?
Does anybody notice the difference in bounce playing on an indoor versus outdoor court ?
If I get some time I may fool around with calculations for this.
Tiger's Jai-Alai Chalk Talk
