What effects, if any, does storage temperature have on the height of a tennis ball’s bounce?
I suspect that cool storage will prolong the life of a tennis ball in an opened can. That’s because the ball’s bounciness depends on its retaining air inside its rubber shell. As the ball loses air by diffusion through the rubber, it loses its ability to bounce high. Diffusion is a thermally activated process in which the individual air molecules move between the rubber molecules and migrate through the material. At lower temperatures, the air molecules will move much more slowly through the rubber and the pressure inside the ball will stay high for a longer time.