The second thing I’ve realized: I am an idiot. I’ve been trying to do all this physics nonsense when I can just directly measure the speed of the ball. I started trying to calculate the speed of the ball going down the ramp at various points to test whether the bending made it deviate from the rigid-ramp model, and I did it just by taking the pixel-length difference in location and combining that with the camera’s frame rate. But why bother with any of those calculations when I can just get the speed of the ball at the end of the ramp just like that?
The REAL lesson here is that a good physicist is lazy.
The REAL lesson here is that a good physicist is lazy.