Elliptical billiards

Adjust the position and velocity of the white ball and start the animation.

Poncelet's Porism is closely related to the trace of a bouncing ball on an elliptical billiard table. Here you can study the trace of a frictionless ball on such a billiard table. The caustic of the traces is a conic confocal to the table itself.

In case that the trajectory is closed the trace forms a Poncelet polygon.


Experiment: Play with the parameters to create various traces. What happens if the initial shot goes between the foci.