Investigating the Factors Affecting the Energy Transfer Involved In a Bouncing Ball

Investigating the Factors Affecting the Energy Transfer Involved In a Bouncing Ball

Planning

Factors affecting the energy of the ball bouncing are the height it is

dropped from, the type of ball, e.g. is it bouncy or hard, the weight

of the ball, and the height it is dropped from. The energy transfer is

as follows:

As it drops it has gravitational potential energy, and then as it is

falling it has kinetic energy when it lands it has elastic potential

energy and as it bounces back upwards it has kinetic energy again.

Energy is also lost through heat and sound.

I decided to use one type of ball, so the weight was constant. And the

height it was dropped from, therefore I dropped it from a range of

different heights so as to get a wide variety of results. The range

was from 200 centimetres to 20 centimetres, measured at 20 centimetre

intervals.

My hypothesis is that the higher the ball is dropped from the higher

it'll bounce back, the height should be constant and regular as in if

the initial height is shorter the height it bounces back to also will

be. I think the height it bounces back to will be very close to the

initial height, but not the same or higher as the energy won't the

same as it was when the ball was first dropped as there is energy loss

involved as I mentioned above.

The preliminary work involved me testing out how to do the experiment

and to record a few results to compare with the final ones. My range

for the preliminary work was from 200 centimetres to 25 centimetres,

measured at 25 centimetre intervals. I found that this didn't give me

very many results, so I decided to make the intervals smaller as said

above.

Results Of Preliminary Experiment

Initial Height (m)

200

175

150

125

100

75

50

25

Average Height Bounced Back (3sf)