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.
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