Moment of Inertia of a Basketball

 

http://www.engin.brown.edu/courses/en4/designproject/DesignProject03/design 03.pdf

 

The basketball is symmetric so it can spin on any axis, unlike a football. Also the mass moment of inertia is at the center of mass, in the case of a basketball, it is the center of the ball (Engineering, 2).

Moment of inertia (I): A resistance to change of rotational motion on a spin axis.

Basketball (spherical shell) moment of inertia is calculated with regards to the radius of the sphere and the mass. I(spherical shell) = (2/3)mR^2.

Dimensions based on NBA basketball size 7:

Input the figures: (2/3)(.62kg)(.38m)^2=0.16 kgm^2

Though this is a small amount of resistance, when a player spins the ball for ball control purposes (backspin) he/she will need to overcome that small amount of resistance to get the ball spinning and estimate just how much more to get the spin he/she desires. If this were something with a bigger mass, the moment of inertia would be of greater importance.