Lab report dependence between elasticity of ball and its’ bounce

height

Inquiry Question

How depend the ball’s bounce height from its elasticity?

We performed investigation how depend the ball’s bounce height in cm from the
its elasticity of ball or material its made. I have chosen to do a practical to see if
we will drop different balls from different materials and elasticity from the same
height how would change the ball’s bounce height and would try to understand
why.

Hypothesis

I predict that the more elasticity of the ball the higher would be ball’s bounce
height because the elasticity influence to power with which ball bounce back due
to elastic collision.

Materials and Equipment

- Usual rubber bounce ball

- Tennis ball
- Plastic ball
- meter

Variables

Independent variable

I will drop balls from the different heights. The height of drop in cm will be
independent variable.

Dependent variable

The dependent variable that I will measure is the ball’s bounce height in cm.

Control variables

- The power of drop: I will drop balls with the same power each time.
- The size of balls: carry out an experiment with the same balls.
- The material of floor: the same floor in each trial.

Method

1. Collect all the equipment needed as listed above and set it up for
performing the experiment.
 2. Take measure of height from which will drop the balls and write result.

3. Take balls and climb the ladder.

4. Drop 3 times each ball from the height of 50, 100, 150 cm and ask your
partner to measure the ball’s bounce height in cm (I caught them and
approximately made signs on wall and then take measures of height by
meter).

5. Measure every procedure the ball’s bounce height in cm by meter and

write up all results to a table.

Results

Ball’s Height of drop The ball’s bounce height in cm

material in cm
1st trial 2nd trial 3rd trial Average
height
Rubber 50 46 45 47 46
Tennis
(rubber
50 30 29 28 29
covered
with felt)
Plastic 50 17 15 18 17
Rubber 100 75 77 70 77
Tennis
(rubber
100 57 53 55 55
covered
with felt)
Plastic 100 23 19 18 20
Rubber 150 110 117 115 114
Tennis
(rubber
150 80 87 79 82
covered
with felt)
Plastic 150 25 27 28 27
As we could see the more elastic of the ball’s material the more bounce it has and
with drop height was increased every time and the ball’s bounce height also
increased. Let’s explore it on the example of rubber ball.
Height of drop in cm Bounce height in cm
50 46
100 77
150 114
Graph:

A graph to show how increasing the height of ball

dropping affects the height of bounce
160.00

140.00

120.00
Height of drop in cm

100.00

80.00

60.00

40.00

20.00

0.00
46 77 114

Bounce height in cm

Data analysis:

As we can see when balls from the different materials as rubber, rubber covered
with felt (tennis ball) and plastic and that’s mean with different elasticity were
dropped from the same heights of 50 cm they had different bounce height of 46,
19 and 17 cm in average from trials, accordingly. As we increase the height of
drop of the balls we could see that also the height of bounce increased
accordingly but rubber ball always had the biggest bounce height in comparison
with less elastic balls. As we could see there is a strong correlation between our
variables.

Conclusion:

Based on our experiment and obtained data, its analysis and graph discussed
above we could see that the height of balls bounce straightly depends from the
elasticity of balls or material it made of. There is a strong correlation between
these two variables. The more the elasticity of the ball the more the height of its’
bounce from the same height of drop and in the same conditions.
I made a graph in Excel that showed bounce’s height of rubber ball from different
drop’s height. This is a positive correlation between these variables.
So, my hypothesis which was stated is confirmed.

Discussion on the validity of hypothesis:

I predicted that the bigger the elasticity of the ball the higher would be the
bounce’s height because of the elastic collision. My hypothesis was confirmed by
experiment and obtained results. This is because at the time of dropping, the ball
and after striking, the ball receives the same energy as result of almost elastic
Collison due to ball’s elastic material. This enables the ball to rise to a great
height due to elasticity of material it made of.

Evaluation:

Limitation Effect Solution (improvement

Difficult to measure This means that in ideal
properly bounce height reality if computer will
measure the bounce
height it would be more
accurate, as human could
not every time properly
and accurate do it
and extension)
We made 3 trials and
calculated average height
to decrease error of
measuring.