Dwell Time

The Dwell Time is the time that a ball spends in the hand. Since the hand is alternately full then empty, we usually express the Dwell Time as either a fraction or a percentage.

The Dwell Time for most jugglers is somewhere between 2/3 (65%) or 3/4 (75%). According to a paper by Jack Kalvin:

"Various tests with highly skilled jugglers show that the preferred dwell ratio for a cascade with 3, 5, 7, or 9 balls is near r = 2/3."
- http://www.juggling.org/papers/OJ/

There are several reasons why the hands tend to be full more than empty. One is that it results in fewer balls in the air on average, because two of them are mostly in the hands. Another reason is that an empty hand can flit from the throw position to the catch position faster than the full hand can carry the ball from the catch to the throw.

The cascade, with site swap SS:3 has a "normal" dwell time, whereas the site swap SS:522 is effectively the same Juggling Pattern, but with a much larger dwell time.

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Dwell Time

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