Bouncing Ball Experiment

1523 Words7 Pages
THE AFFECT OF DROP DISTANCE ON BALL BOUNCE HEIGHT The Affect of Drop Distance on Ball Bounce Height James Ackerson Western Governors University 1 THE AFFECT OF DROP DISTANCE ON BALL BOUNCE HEIGHT 2 Problem Statement: How does the drop distance of a ball affect its return bounce height? In other words if we drop a ball from a greater distance will it bounce higher, lower or will it stay the same? Literature Review #1 “The Effect of Dropping a Ball from Different Heights on the Number of Times the Ball Bounces” (S. Kubrick, P. Sellers, G.C. Scott, S. Hayden, 1964) The experiment begins with the authors’ assumptions. “Therefore it only makes sense that a ball will bounce more often when it is released from a greater height.” (S. Kubrick, P. Sellers, G.C. Scott, S. Hayden, 1964) Following their assumptions, the authors begin to rigorously test their conjecture with a well-designed experiment. In this experiment they used tennis balls dropped from five different heights. They used the same brand tennis ball from a cardboard box “launcher” onto the same smooth concrete floor every time to ensure uniformity. The authors used the same two people as bounce counters throughout the experiment to maintain consistency. Six drops from five different heights, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3 meters gave them the data they needed to make their conclusion. The authors found that the number of ball bounces did increase up to the two-meter mark and then actually decreased from the two to three-meter mark. The authors’ conclusion in their own words, “We hypothesized that a ball would bounce more frequently when released from a greater height, and while our experiment showed this to be true of drops between 1 and 2 meters, dropping a ball from any height greater than 2 meters actually reduces the number of times the ball bounces.” (S. Kubrick, P. Sellers, G.C.

More about Bouncing Ball Experiment

Open Document