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

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June, 2002                                                                      Suzannah Lipmann

Physics Coursework

An Experiment 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.

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        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

Method To Preliminary Experiment

My method involved the apparatus being set up.  I used one stand with a clamp, and two metre rules stuck together, one on top of ...

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