Coefficient of Rebound

Winston, Rosalyn                      Walt Disney Magnet
                                      1-312-525-7879
                           

Objectives

1.  To investigate the variables (factors) influencing the bouncing of balls.
2.  To find the coefficient of rerebound for four balls. 
3.  To observe how the manipulated and control variable are correlated by graphing 
    the data. 

Apparatus Needed

An overhead projector, overhead projector pens, graph transparency, graph paper, 
metric ruler, 4 meter sticks,  4 basketballs, 4 golf balls,  4 tennis balls ,4 
superballs, 20 #2 pencils, masking tape, 1 beach ball, 1 Nerf ball, 1 clay ball,   1 
Earth ball. 

Recommended Strategies
1.  Make a collection of balls of different sizes, weights,and materials. 
2.  Use such a collection for demonstrations. Get the students to question the 
    collection.  Is the biggest ball the heaviest?  Is the smallest the lightest?  
    Which ball will bounce the highest? Why does the superball bounce so high? 
3.  Have the students work in cooperative learning teams. One student will be a 
    demonstrator. One student will be an observer. One student will be a recorder. 
4.  Using masking tape mark heights of 40 cm, 80 cm, 120 cm, on the wall where the 
    floor surface is hard.  Call these heights H1.  Instruct students to drop each 
    kind of ball from the three heights and measure the height of the rebound. Record 
    this data on the Data sheet.  Call the rebound height H2. 
5.  Instruct the students to calculate the coefficient of rerebound,(Rebound 
    Height) / (Initial Height). 
6.  Graph H1 on the horizontal axis and H2 on the vertical axis. 
7.  Graph the results from the data sheet using a different colored pencil to 
    represent each ball.