Shoot the Moon

Abstract

The counter-top game Shoot the Moon is a classic board game, known to many of us since our childhoods: The game consists of two inclined rods which are free to move in an inclined plane. A ball is then placed on top of this rod, and the goal of the game is to propel the ball as far forward as possible, by squeezing the rods. In this paper we set up a model of the kinematics of the game, under the assumption of rigid motion. We prove, under certain additional assumptions, that the distance travelled by the ball must be bounded.