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Lab04 - High-Flying Balls

The 'High Flying Balls' lab activity aims to teach students about physics concepts such as momentum and energy conservation through a hands-on experiment using a basketball and a tennis ball. Students will observe the behavior of the balls when dropped separately and stacked, and answer questions related to the outcomes of the experiment. The activity encourages personal reflection by asking students to identify similar phenomena in their everyday lives.

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22 views2 pages

Lab04 - High-Flying Balls

The 'High Flying Balls' lab activity aims to teach students about physics concepts such as momentum and energy conservation through a hands-on experiment using a basketball and a tennis ball. Students will observe the behavior of the balls when dropped separately and stacked, and answer questions related to the outcomes of the experiment. The activity encourages personal reflection by asking students to identify similar phenomena in their everyday lives.

Uploaded by

Camp707
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 DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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High Flying Balls – Lab Activity

Disclaimer: This activity is a customized version of the experiment found in the textbook with permission from Wiley

Learning Goals:
Students will be able to:
1. Improvise and build small physics experiment from household items
2. Observe and describe physical phenomena
3. Explain how the conservation of momentum describes the motion of objects in a closed
system.
4. Relate everyday life events with physical theories

Experiment:
Among the physical issues that we discuss in this chapter are the reaction effects that push
rockets forward. These reaction effects appear in an interesting way in a simple experiment that
involves two different-size balls: a basketball and a tennis ball.
If you can't find a basketball and a tennis ball, any two lively balls of very different masses will
do. Drop the balls separately and see how high they bounce. You'll immediately notice that an individual
ball can't bounce higher than the point from which you dropped it. Such a rebound would give it more
energy than it had originally. In fact, some of the ball's energy will be lost to thermal energy, so it will
not even reach its original height.
But what will happen when you stack the smaller ball on top of the larger ball and drop the two
balls together? Think about the sequence of events that will occur, and then give it a try. Make sure that
the small ball remains directly above the large ball as the two balls fall to the floor.
Try the same experiment with balls of various sizes to gather more insight into what is
happening.
1. Why does the smaller ball rebound as it does?
2. How does your choice of balls influence this effect?
3. If you put the smaller ball on the bottom, will that change the outcome?
4. What about dropping the pair of balls from a different height?
5. What happens to the bottom ball when you drop it? Try again if you weren’t watching it the first
time.
6. How could you exaggerate this effect? For example, would you choose different balls, or drop
them in a different way? How would this exaggerate the effect that you observed?
Concluding Everyday Life Task:
7. Name two examples from your personal daily life where you see a phenomenon like this. Please
try not to give standard examples as given in the textbook but make it a personal challenge to
discover examples in your daily life!

Directions:
1. Carefully build the experimental setup as instructed
2. Perform the experiment by following the given instructions
3. Record your observations and conclusions in a brief written report by answering the given
questions
4. Include pictures or a short video of your experiment into your report in order to support
your findings
5. Submit the report including photos or videos before the deadline

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