![](http://www.pd.infn.it/%7Edorigo/basketball_eq.jpg)
Dynamics can be surprising at times, even when applied to well-understood and tested physical systems such as a basketball and a basket. Look what happened to a free shot executed by Kamyl Kawrzydek in a match between Idaho State University and Utah State University, played at
Gossner's Invitational: the ball bounces on the basket, and then stops there for three full seconds, before eventually dropping into the basket.
Nothing magic of course: just a one-in-a-million situation, whereby a unstable equilibrium point is reached by a physical system with insufficient kinetic energy to roll off to smaller potential energy. Eventually the ball does it, but in such a situation sound waves, thermal stress, and pressure waves within the ball become important to decide the future evolution of the system...
A video of the shot is
here.
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