Question

Tabletop shuffleboard is a popular pub game where players slide pucks across a tabletop trying to get them as close to the end of the table as possible, without falling off. Shuffleboard tables are typically covered in shuffleboard wax, which gives a very low coefficient of kinetic friction between the table and puck. Suppose that one particular table is 6.0 long m and has a coefficient of kinetic friction of 0.080. What speed should a player give to a puck on one end of the table so the puck just makes it to the far end?

Answer 1

Let the mass of the puck be .

The force the fiction exerts on it is equal to

The work the friction does as the puck travels the distance is equal to the force times the distance over which it acts.

For the puck to just reach the other end, the initial kinetic energy imparted has to be equal to the work done by the friction. This way, by the time the puck reaches the other end, all its kinetic energy will be degraded by the friction and its speed will be zero.

Equating the two, we get