My 5 year old wants to do his kindergarten science project on “why do balls bounce?” His hypothesis is that “balls bounce because of the stuff inside.” Can you advise how best to test this hypothesis and explain this concept on a level that a bright, but still only 5 year old, can truly understand? — MS, Bayside, New York
I’d suggest finding a hollow rubber ball with a relatively thin, flexible skin and putting different things inside it. You can just cut a small hole and tape it over after you put in “the stuff.” Compare the ball’s bounciness when it contains air, water, shaving cream, beans, rice, and so on. Just drop it from a consistent height and see how high it rebounds. The ratio of its rebound height to its drop height is a good measure of how well the ball stores energy when it hits the ground and how well it uses that energy to rebound. A ball that bounces to full height is perfect at storing energy while a ball that doesn’t bounce at all is completely terrible at storing energy. You’ll get something in between for most of your attempts—indicating that “the stuff” is OK but not perfect at storing energy during the bounce. The missing energy isn’t destroyed, it’s just turned into thermal energy. The ball gets a tiny bit hotter with every bounce.
You won’t get any important quantitative results from this sort of experiment, but it’ll be fun anyway. I wonder what fillings will make the ball bounce best or worst?