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Coin Tossing as a Billiard Problem

N. L. Balazs·Rupak Chatterjee·A. D. Jackson
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Abstract

We demonstrate that the free motion of any two-dimensional rigid body colliding elastically with two parallel, flat walls is equivalent to a billiard system. Using this equivalence, we analyze the integrable and chaotic properties of this new class of billiards. This provides a demonstration that coin tossing, the prototypical example of an independent random process, is a completely chaotic (Bernoulli) problem. The related question of which billiard geometries can be represented as rigid body systems is examined.

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BibTeXRIS

N. L. Balazs, Rupak Chatterjee, A. D. Jackson. 1995-02-15. Coin Tossing as a Billiard Problem. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.52.3608

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