Juggling

The American Heritage Dictionary defines juggle first as "To keep (two or more) objects in the air at one time by alternately tossing and catching them," and second, to have difficulty holding; balance insecurely. The first definition is known as toss juggling, while the second hints at the very broad spectrum of object manipulations that can be said to comprise juggling. The objects that are juggled are called props. The paths followed by the props while juggling is called the pattern. The commonest pattern used today for juggling is the cascade, in which the balls or other props follow a horizontal figure eight pattern above the hands. Other common patterns are columns and fountains, where each hand throws balls almost straight up and each ball is caught in the same hand that throws it, and the shower pattern in which every ball is thrown in a high arc from the right hand to the left (or vice versa) and then quickly passed off with a very low throw from the left to the right (or vice versa). For any number of objects greater than two, the shower pattern is much more difficult than the cascade or fountain. One way to simplify the juggling of many objects is what modern jugglers call "multiplexing." In multiplexing the props are caught individually as in ordinary toss juggling, but two or more props are gathered in a hand sequentially and then are all thrown at the same time. It is also easier to bounce juggle (in which balls are bounced off the floor instead of thrown in the air) large numbers of balls than to toss juggle them, because the energy requirements are considerably lower, e.g., the first robot juggling machine bounce juggled. The earliest known depiction of toss juggling is Egyptian, from the 15th Beni Hassan tomb of an unknown prince, dating from the middle kingdom period of about 1994-1781 B.C. [5]. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin has a Terra Cotta Statue from the time of Ptolomaer of ancient Thebes, about 200 B.C., of a man with balls balanced on different parts of his body.