The factors I will keep the same throughout the whole investigation are:
- Golf ball
- Room Temperature
- Floor
Golf Ball: This factor will have to stay the same to keep the investigation just and fair. The same golf ball should be used to measure every rebound height. If I change the golf ball then it could cause the investigation to be unfair as the golf ball may vary in its shape, size etc.
Room Temperature: This factor is something that I cannot change. The room temperature will stay the same throughout the whole investigation, I don’t think this factor will have a big effect on the results of the investigation.
Floor: This factor is also something else I cannot change; it will stay the same throughout the investigation. We will try our best to drop the golf ball in the same place on the floor where the ball has been dropped before at different heights.
The Factors of the investigation I cannot control are:
- Room Temperature
- Type of Ball
Room Temp: As I said before this is a factor I cannot change, I don’t think it will have a big affect but I want to take account of it.
Type of Ball: I cannot change the type of ball I have been given after I have made some results. The type of ball has to be the same throughout the whole investigation to make it as just and fair as possible.
Safety Points:
- Throwing Ball
- Standing on the chair
Throwing Ball: This safety point is extremely important, if you have ever held or felt a golf ball you will see that they are heavy and have a hard and strong shell. If anyone was to be hit by a golf it could cause a lot of pain. And it could easily break glass bottles or windows if thrown at speed, which is why this should not happen during the investigation.
Standing on the chair: This safety point we will have to be careful of when doing the investigation. As one of us will be standing on the chair dropping and catching the golf ball at different heights, it’s key that whoever is on the chair is supported and safely on it, so there is no danger of the person falling of and hurting themselves.
I will be recording lots of measurements and to make this experiment as fair and just as possible. I will do a minimum of 5 release heights, with 3 results of each height so I can get an average out of the three. Each result will be in cm.
My perception of what the final outcome will be is that as we slowly progress in height, the ball will rebound higher as it will be increasing in height as it moves up. On the other hand it will decrease in height at a much lower level. The bounce of the ball will be consistent all the time, so there is no need to worry about changing the ball, or the ball getting damaged because a golf ball has a very tough exterior. So the outcome I think will be that when the ball is released it will increase at a higher height and will not rebound as high on a smaller height.
I will be repeating each height 3 times as I have said before; this is because I want to get an average of the rebound from each height we measure, to make this experiment as just and fair as possible.
My Evidence:
A Table to show my result’s from each of the different heights, 3 results were taken and the average was worked out.
This is a table to show the percentage of the rebound height.
The only basic pattern that I have seen is that the rebound height increases as the height increases.
From the data I have gathered from the experiment I have found out that, the ball rebound of this golf ball did increase as the height increased. This is pretty simple a golf ball is pretty bouncy if you dropped the golf ball it would come back to the same position or even higher from where you dropped it from. This was proved in this experiment, every time we increased the height of the drop the ball rebounded to that height and even higher most of the time, the reason for this is that the ball gathered speed while dropping down when it had it’s impact with the ground it rebounded straight back up. I don’t think it lost any speed, the fact the floor was hard was ideal for this experiment As if we had done this experiment on carpet I am sure we would have got very different results.
My prediction was right; I said the golf ball’s rebound would increase as the height of where it was dropped from went higher.
I think our method did work well, the way we did it was as fair as it could be, and we did each height 3 times to get an average. We recorded everything we got accurately.
We didn’t have many problems during the experiment but we did have the fact that the person standing on the chair maybe wasn’t safe enough. The fact that as the height increased made it harder to reach and keep an accurate hand when dropping the ball.
If I could do the experiment again I would place the metre rulers in a place where it was easier to reach too. Also a location where it would be safer for the person dropping the golf ball.
I think the evidence we collected was good, we did it as accurately as possible to make this experiment as fair and just as we could. The results all seemed to be what we expected no odd ones. The fact that we did 3 results from each height made our job much easier in the way that we could get a good accurate result, and we were fair at the same time.
I think our results are very reliable, the evidence is as clear as we could make it. The 3 results of each height are all pretty similar for example when we released the golf ball at 50cm, the results we got were: 33, 35, and 39 which are all pretty similar.
In conclusion I enjoyed doing this experiment I thought the group worked well and it was interesting and fun to do. If there is one main think I would have liked to have done is, recording the height the golf ball reached with a video camera. Then when playing it back I could have paused the video at the exact moment where the golf ball reached its highest rebound height. This would have made the experiment much more accurate. However I think we did well, we got good results and we tried to be as just and fair as possible.