🏀 Ball drop height and bounce: the whole packet

🏀 Ball drop height and bounce · 1st–5th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 40 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change the height the ball is dropped from, then how high the ball bounces will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

4 levels × 3 tries at each = 12 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🎾 A tennis ball or a playground ball
• 📏 A tape measure, or a long ruler
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines

Be safe: 🧍 Drop from standing: never climb

1. Tape the tape measure up a wall, with 0 at the floor.
2. Hold the ball next to the tape, with its bottom at 25 cm.
3. Let go. Don't throw it! Stand on the floor and never climb.
4. A helper crouches by the tape and watches how high the ball's bottom gets on its first bounce.
5. Write the height in your table under Try 1.
6. Drop it two more times from 25 cm, and write each one down.
7. Do three drops from 50 cm, then three from 75 cm, then three from 100 cm.
8. Find the middle number for each height, and draw a line graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Drop height   I measured: how high the ball bounces (cm)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: drop height along the bottom, cm up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: drop the ball onto carpet as well as a hard floor from each height, and draw a line for each floor.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does a ball dropped from higher bounce higher?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing the height the ball is dropped from would change how high the ball bounces, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed the height the ball is dropped from (25 cm, 50 cm, 75 cm, 100 cm) and measured how high the ball bounces in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same ball and the same floor the same, so only the height the ball is dropped from was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 4 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: 25 cm and 100 cm gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: drop the ball onto carpet as well as a hard floor from each height, and draw a line for each floor.