Trampoline Effect Deflated

Apparently pickleball has a problem with a pseudo scientific thing called trampoline effect. We've blamed this so-called effect exclusively on paddles. We've discussed this in the past but essentially it postulates that paddle faces have meaningful compressibility and it's providing an elastic boost to balls. 

Trampoline effect it's not a major factor at play in the sport the way it's commonly described at least. Yet we are making rules as if we truly think that paddle faces are meaningfully compressible. This is like saying that consider a person jumping on a trampoline. How high they will bounce depends on that person's weight and behavior as well as the elasticity of the trampoline. We are saying with our rules that the paddle face is the trampoline when we know faces are more or less rigid. The trampoline is the ball. This is even mathematically demonstrable. Coefficient of restitution for paddles is set at .43 meeting the paddle can at most retain 43% of the energy of a collision. As a virtue of its elasticity the ball retains most of the remaining 57%. PBCoR says we have an issue with the trampoline but only considers the jumper.

Once again we know mathematically that the paddles share of energy is lower than the balls. Yet we are not considering the contribution of the ball or it's elasticity. What's more is paddle ball impacts have many more dynamic factors that we are not representing with pbcor. This test requires a special ball as trampoline effect isn't going to occur when you project a ball with cutouts at a flat and hard paddle face with high velocity. So in order to try reproduce this effect PBCoR uses a ball with no cutouts! This significantly strengthens the form factor.

Manufacturers going along with this test have already shown they are willing to work with the USAP to pull paddles from the market without question to the scientific basis of the rules themselves. We won't name them, but these companies are doing the sport and their customers a disservice. 

I hope this analogy helps and makes people wonder if these rules are being made out of ignorance or good faith.