Abstract: The probability of landing on the front and back of traditional coin approaches 1/2 respectively, while the probability of landing on the side is almost zero. In order to explore the factors affecting the probability of landing evenly on three sides of a new type of cylindrical dice, kinematic process of elastic collision and inelastic collision of cylindrical dice are theoretically analyzed from the perspective of mechanics, and the factors affecting the probability of landing evenly are divided into physical and geometric characteristics of cylindrical dice and external influencing factors. By establishing various types of cylindrical dice models, the control variable method is used to carry out the experiment and the software is used to carry out the simulation. The experimental and simulation results are agreement with the theoretical analysis. The results show that the thickness to diameter ratio, the hardness of contact surface material, the throwing height and the angle between the center of gravity of the cylinder and the vertical direction vector are the main factors affecting the uniformity of landing probability.

Key words: elastic collision, inelastic collision, control variable method, simulation