Billiards and ergodicity
No. 67, 1973
(Dynamical systems and probability theory)
India ink and pencil on paper, 30.5 x 42.5 cm.
A field of balls, reaching out in all directions, with human beings sprawled on top of spheres in the foreground. Imagine that only one ball were racing furiously around the field, rebounding from edge to edge, while a strobe light was capturing it in different positions. Eventually, if the images were superimposed on one another, then a whole field would be filled by images of balls scattered about. That is the case here in this study of the billiard ball problem, keeping in mind the central operating rule governing the ball's motion, that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. This picture represents the successive positions of a ball in motion, crisscrossing its way throughout an expansive plane, creating an image that is dense in some areas, sparse in others, with occasional empty spaces.
