My solution was emrely for evenly spaced and visually "average" dimples. I 
have to say that it never occured to me the technique might be copytight. in 
my defense, I was doing spikes on a mace :)

As to the aerodynamics - I only know that the dimples cause pockets of air 
reducing the friction/air resistance by creating an envelope around the 
ball. Beyond that, I'm afraid yuou're on your own - if it's any consolation, 
I doubt many people will know if it's wrong.

"Trevor G Quayle" <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message 
news:web.4677eba5bc62bf83c150d4c10@news.povray.org...
> Christian Froeschlin <chr### [at] chrfrde> wrote:
>> Google actually turned up a patent applying this to golf balls ;)
>>
>> "A golf ball having a plurality of dimples on its surface, the dimples
>> as a whole are distributed on at least a portion of the golf ball using
>> principles of electromagnetic theory. The dimples placed on the golf
>> ball surface are assigned charge values that are used to determine the
>> electric potential. A solution method is then applied to minimize the
>> potential by rearrangement of the dimple positions."
>>
>> http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6884184.html
>
> Interesting idea, but I wonder how this actually works with respect to the
> prinicpal of having the dimples in the first place which is an aerodynamic
> flow problem...
>
> -tgq
>
>

Post a reply to this message