Point of Impact.

[Bewlay Bros]

If you are slapped by a shoe it would not hurt as much as if you were slapped by a fshoe with a ootball stud. I believe this is because the point of impact (i.e the stud) will have all the energy of the shoe but in a smaller area.

The same principle as if an elephant trod on you, it would be ten times worse if the elephant wore high heels!!!

My question.

Pool is a more powerful game than snooker. There is more whack and hope, especially in the break off.

However the game of skill is just thje same once amongst the balls.

Why therefore do pool cues, from the local pub to professional 8 ball, have fat tips whilst snooker cues always have slim more accurate tips.

Surely if the above principle works, pool should use a smaller tip to createmore power.

I do not believe it is the rules of the game. Any tip will actually suffice.

Can anybody please explain.

[Azalian]

You're right, since pressure = force x unit area, that a "fat" tip will, given the same cue velocity and weight (mass) of cue achieve a lower transfer of momentum.

But the pool tables are smaller in area than snooker tables and since the only "power" shot in pool is the first breakoff shot , does the tip's area really matter?

[dundurn]

I think you've got your physics a bit mixed up here. Assuming that the momentum in the cue is transferred to the ball it won't actually matter how big the surface area of the tip is. It's not as if you're trying to dig a hole in the ball! I think the size of tip has more to do with the amount of contact available to the player and therefore the amount of "side" they can put on the ball. I suspect that accuracy is improved with the smaller tip and "side" with the larger. Final point, I do remember pool players who had two cues, one just for making the break and the other for the rest of the match. The difference between the two may have been the tip, or it may have been something else entirely. When you play as badly as I do technical considerations like this are a bit irrelevant!

[ll_billym]

A few thoughts from a layman:

What you are talking about is pressure and it doesn't come into play here as the snooker ball is very hard, solid object that moves away from the cue the moment it is hit. (Unlike you being hit by a football boot) .

The speed the ball leaves the cue depends on the speed the cue hits it. It will move just as fast/far if hit by you using a pinhead or with a mallet provided they were travelling at the same speed when they hit the ball(disregarding the differences in friction of different substances).

In niether snooker or pool is the object to hit the balls as hard as possible, it is to make the balls go where you want them to. The reason for hitting the balls with a small size head is to be able to hit the ball on the sides/top/bottom and create spin to control the ball after it has been hit, i.e. swerve, backspin, topspin, etc.

Professional pool balls are bigger than professional snooker balls hence having bigger cues.

The cues provided by the pub are thick because they are poor quality and so that people don't keep snapping them. The members of the pub pool team will have their own cues that have small tips like snooker cues.