Bouncing Balls

Here is a fabulous set of teacher's notes that will make your next hands-on gravity and force lab fun and interesting. These notes provide you with three activities that allow children to make and test hypothesis regarding force,...

Upper elementary scientists test basketballs with differing amounts of air to find if inflation affects bounce height. The instructional activity introduction poses the question of whether or not the composition of a ball determines...

Choosing between a medicine ball and a basketball, which will hit the ground first when dropped? Learners watch as visitors at a festival demonstrate in an interview-style video. The narrator asks visitors to guess, then drops the balls....

In this activity, students' will create a Height-Time plot for a bouncing ball. They will examine how the ball's height changes mathematically from one bounce to the next.

Students investigate potential energy. For this potential energy lesson, students do an experiment with a bouncing ball. Students mark how high the ball bounces when it is dropped and record their results. Students discuss...

Take part in a fun experiment and hold an impromptu bouncing contest with your class. Young scientists heat and cool balls before bouncing them to determine whether temperature changes affect how they bounce. The set of...

Learners explore the concept of parabolas by collecting quadratic data on a bouncing ball as it is falling using a motion detector. They plot the data and determine the equation of the quadratic in vertex form, then determine the values...

Egg drops aren't just for soup. Scholars design a landing craft with internal padding and external protection to safeguard an egg as it is dropped from a given height. They build their craft and then test out its effectiveness.

Students design, revise and construct a method for protecting an egg from cracking when it is dropped from a height. They work in small groups to develop their protection method and then collect and analyze data as a class when each...

Students investigate different balls' abilities to bounce. They conduct a Ball Bounce Height Comparison and Ball Bounce Time Comparison, complete a worksheet, graph the results of their experiment, and answer investigating questions.