Question

Why are you unable to observe the wavelike motion of a soccer ball as it is kicked toward a goal?

Answer 1

We all know that a soccer ball is composed of matter, and matter is made up of particles of atoms such as protons and electrons, and matter of  soccer ball can also be made up of waves of electrons and protons. This is now in a realm of quantum mechanics were everything defies our logic and common sense. Atoms can be defined as particle and also as a wave, they called it particle wave duality, it means atoms behave as wave and a particle. This is the trickiest part, Imagine that you are not observing the flight of the soccer ball, it actually behave as a wave as it moves in its trajectory, but at the moment that you are going to observe the flight of the soccer ball, it will behave as a particle as you see on its trajectory, becoming a ball or a particle, and that is the weird of part of quantum mechanics, the world of subatomic particles defies all common sense or logic. Remember that we will never see the wave like motion of any particle, because nature always plays a trick on our mind or senses.

Answer 2

Answer:

Every object has both particle and wave nature. From de-Broglie wavelength formula:

$\lambda = \frac{h}{p}=\frac{h}{mv}$

where, λ is the wavelength, h is Planck's constant and p = mv is the momentum.

A soccer ball has large momentum due to high mass and velocity when it is kicked making the wavelength λ very small. Hence, we are not able to observe the wavelike motion of the soccer ball when it is kicked towards the goal.

on an average, a soccer ball weighs around 430 g= 0.43 kg. If it is kicked with an initial speed of 25 m/s, then

$\lambda =\frac{6.63\times 10^{-34} m^2 kg/s}{0.43 kg\times 25 m/s}=6.2 \times10^{-35} m$

This is very small in magnitude and hence we are unable to observe its wavelike motion.