Ball Experiment

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Pages: 4

When a ball bounces it does not bounce all the way back up, why is this? When a ball drops, it will bounce back up, but not all the way back up, because energy is lost in heat, sound, gravity, and air resistance. Energy is lost in so many different ways that the ball does not have enough energy to bounce back up to its starting point. So if you drop a ball and let it bounce, it will never bounce up to its original point without external energy. The point of my experiment is to list and document the forces acting on a ball that is dropped from a certain height. There are so many forces acting on the ball it is impossible for it to bounce to its original height. The ball does not bounce as high because of air resistance and gravity pulling it …show more content…
When we drop the ball we measure the speed and height of the ball at the peak of the bounce and when it hits the ground. The point of the experiment is to find how many variables affect the ball when it bounces and when it hits the ground. When the ball hits the ground, it loses energy that becomes friction on collision with the ground, Creating heat and then again when you hear the noise of the ball hitting the ground that is more energy lost or transferred. Newton's third law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, The action is of the ball hitting the ground the opposite reaction is the ball bouncing back up when the equal reaction is the sound that you hear. Newton’s first law is an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force, so when the ball hits the ground all that energy has to be converted into heat sound or inertia. When the ball hits the ground it rubs against the floor creating heat and friction and that is how some of the energy is lost, when the ball makes sound on contact with the floor it creates a sound and there is the more lost energy on top of gravity and air …show more content…
The part of the drop where the ball loses the most speed is when the ball hits the ground making heat and sound. Friction is when the ball rubs on the floor it is transferred into. heat the kinetic energy of the ball when falling is transferred into heat and sound when the air around the ball is displaced and that takes energy to do that and that is where the rest of the energy is transferred. Air resistance is friction because the ball is still displacing the air and using energy to do that as well as creating heat and sound so all the outside forces of the ball not counting friction is gravity and the act of dropping the ball. When we are holding the ball before dropping it has potential energy because if it drops it has all that energy to keep it falling down and has kinetic energy until it hits the ground and has potential energy. For instance the ball is touching the ground its velocity changes and starts moving up instead of down and then bounces back