TheBritishAreComing

Oana M. and Sean G.

Goal 1: How does the original height from which we drop the tennis ball affect the force with which the ball hits the weight scale? Goal 2: How will the original height affect the height after the ball hits the weight scale?

Procedure: 1. Get all materials together. Tennis ball, meter sticks, weight scale 2. Line up meter sticks one on top of the other and maybe tape them together? 3. Put weight scale next to the meter sticks on the floor 4. Release the tennis ball from various heights along the meter sticks 5. Record the force with which the ball hits the scale from said height 6. Immediately after the ball hits the scale, measure the height it bounces back along the meter sticks 7. Record data and repeat



Data: Data Analysis:

According to our data above, as the distance from which we dropped the tennis ball increased, the rebound height of the ball increased. Therefore, there is a direct relationship between the initial distance and the rebound height. Also, as the initial height incresed, the force with which the tennis ball hit the scale varied drastically. We were unable to find a clear pattern relating the two.

Conclusion: Our hypothesis is that as as the initial height from which we drop the tennis ball increases, the force with which the ball hits the weight scale will also increase. After we conducted our experiment, we realized that the force with which the ball hits the weight scale fluxuates; it does not follow any specific pattern. As we increased the height from zero to 50 cm, the force steadily increased, but then it suddenly dropped once we dropped the tennis ball from 60 cm. We believe that this happens possibly because as the ball falls, it caves in on itself. Another possible explanation is that the data changes because of material heat since the ball is made of rubber. Finally, our last explanation is air resistance: as the ball falls greater distances, air resistance increases. As we increased the height from 60 cm, the force began to vary even more, as we can see in the graph. Therefore, our original hypothesis was proven incorrect throughout our experiment.

Our hypothesis is that as the original height from which we drop the tennis ball increases, the rebound height that the tennis ball reaches also increases. According to our graph, as we increased the initial height steadily by 10 cm each time, the rebound height of the tennis ball also steadily increased (except for a few outlying results, which are normal in any experiment). Therefore, our original hypothesis was proven correct by our experiment.