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Using Sound To Do Mechanics: Ananda Dasgupta

1) The document describes an experiment to measure the coefficient of restitution and gravitational acceleration by recording the bouncing of a steel ball bearing dropped from various heights onto a hard surface using audio recording software. 2) Analyzing the recorded times between bounces reveals a geometric progression as predicted by theory, allowing calculation of the coefficient of restitution and gravitational acceleration from the recorded data. 3) This bouncing ball method provides an inexpensive and accurate way to measure these values, compared to more complex and expensive traditional techniques.

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44 views11 pages

Using Sound To Do Mechanics: Ananda Dasgupta

1) The document describes an experiment to measure the coefficient of restitution and gravitational acceleration by recording the bouncing of a steel ball bearing dropped from various heights onto a hard surface using audio recording software. 2) Analyzing the recorded times between bounces reveals a geometric progression as predicted by theory, allowing calculation of the coefficient of restitution and gravitational acceleration from the recorded data. 3) This bouncing ball method provides an inexpensive and accurate way to measure these values, compared to more complex and expensive traditional techniques.

Uploaded by

deepak_senior
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Using sound to do mechanics

Ananda Dasgupta

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata

NPTEL workshop
The bouncing ball

When a ball is dropped onto a hard table it bounces.


I At each bounce, it loses speed
I The speeds at successive bounces are related by
vn+1 = rvn
where r (< 1) is the coefficient of restitution.
I The bounces get progressively closer together in time.
The bouncing ball - some math

If the ball is dropped from a height h:


I Its speed when it hits the ground for the first time is
√
v0 = 2gh
I Speed after the n-th bounce is vn = r n v0 .
I Time interval between the n-th and the n + 1-th bounce is
2vn 2v0
tn = = rn
g g

I Total time taken between the first bounce and the N-th is
s
N−1
X 2v0 r − r N 8h r − r N
TN = tn = =
g 1−r g 1−r
n=1
The bouncing ball - warmup experiment

You will need :


I Steel ball bearings
I A hard surface (glass table-top, tiled floor ...)
I A stopwatch - your mobile phone will do.
Procedure :
I Drop a ball bearing on to the hard surface from a measured
height h.
I Start the stop watch when you hear the ball hit the surface.
I Count the bounces (by the noise) till you reach a sufficiently
high number - say 10, and stop the stop watch.
I Repeat several times for the same height h.
I For better results, do the above for several values of h.
The bouncing ball - warmup experiment

Shortcomings :
I Human response time limits accuracy
I Counting bounces is tedious ...
I ... and errorprone.
I Does not allow you to verify the geometric progression of the
tn s.
I The value of g is an input!
The bouncing ball - a more detailed look

You will need :


I Steel ball bearings
I A hard surface (glass table-top, tiled floor ...)
I A Laptop/Desktop/Mobile phone with microphone
I Audio processing software (we will use Audacity)
Procedure :
I Drop a ball bearing on to the hard surface from a measured
height h.
I Record the sound
I Open the sound file in Audacity
I Zoom in to read off the times of the bounces
I You can get the times correct to a mili-second!
The bouncing ball - a more detailed look
A view of Audacity in action
The bouncing ball - a more detailed look
Audacity in action - zooming in
The bouncing ball - a more detailed look
Results

I The red dots are the time intervals between the bounces.
I The blue line is the best fit curve tn = a r n
I The best fit values are a = 0.483, r = 0.952
s
8h
I Since a = , we can use the above to determine the value
g
of g , which here comes out to be 10.33 ms−2 .
The bouncing ball - Analyzing the data

I tn = a r n =⇒ ln tn = ln a + n ln r
I Plot a graph of ln tn versus n.
I Draw the best fit straight line to this graph.
I Determine ln a and ln r as the intercept and the slope,
respectively, of this best fit line.
I Use this to calculate r and g .
Comparison

There are typically four methods cited in the literature for


measuring e :
I Measurement of vertical rebound
I Spark photography (today - high speed movie cameras and
tracker)
I Measurement of angle of rebound from an inclined plane
I Double ballistic pendulum method of Thomas
These methods are all difficult to perform accurately, and are often
expensive. Our method, in contrast, is cheap and quite accurate!

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