Why exactly doesn't a basketball reach the same height it was dropped from after bouncing off the floor?

Question

Does it have to do something with conservation of energy or the principles of momentum(physics)?

Answer 1

It does actually have to do with conservation of energy.
When you hold the ball up, it has a certain amount of potential energy. When you drop it, gravity accelerates the ball to a certain speed, and then it hits the floor. When it hits the floor, some of the energy is converted to noise, and some to heat. So it loses energy. Then it comes back up with the energy that is left. If it didn't lose energy by hitting the floor, it would come back up to the same height.

Answer 2

it has to do with the energy losses that occur when the ball hits the ground.

in a perfectly elasticic reaction, no energy is lost. However, when a basketball bounces, its shape deforms a little, which absorbs some of the energy that the ball had from its initial height, which is in the form of potential energy.

A small amount of energy is also lost through sound.

If you added up all the energy lost through deformation, sound and so forth, plus the height that the ball bounced, you would find that it equals the original potential energy the ball had before you dropped it.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

Conservation of energy. The ball loses energy several ways: friction with the air, making the "bounce" sound, heating up the floor when it's hit, etc. Therefore it can never get quite as high on successive bounces.

Answer 4

as the ball hits the ground, the impact takes its kinetic energy through conservation of momentum. the energy that is released from the ball can be felt as vibrations in the ground and the sound when the ball collides with the ground. also due to the force of gravity, the ball looses more kinetic energy every time it bounces off the ground.

Answer 5

It's because the collision with the floor isn't 'perfectly elastic'. There is some energy lost when the air in the ball is heated by compression, and there is some energy lost when the cover of the ball flexes. There is also some energy lost due to air friction.

HTH

Doug

Answer 6

If you ignore aerodynamic issues, then yes it will reach the ground at the same time. The reason I say this is because if a bullet without a horizontal velocity is released, it will rotate so that it is in the most aerodynamic position. A bullet fired out of a gun on the other hand sees the airflow differently, so the drag acting on the bullet caused by the air is going to be different. If we were to ignore the effect of air, then yes, they would impact the ground at the same time since the horizontal force only acts horizontally.

Answer 7

Partially because some of its energy is lost to friction with the air during its descent and ascent, and also because bouncing transfers some of its energy into the earth. Due to all this energy transfer, it can't fight gravity as well and doesn't come up as far.

Answer 8

The particles of the ball compress together and some of their kinetic energy is lost due to that and this action acts as a damping force acting against it
for those people who said that its due to gravity, thats not correct, because gravity gives it speed going down and reduces its speed going up, and its the same force but in opposite diraction

Answer 9

well you have losses because of air resistance (friction) both dropping and bouncing back, and the elasticity of the bounce itself is not without losses. so if you factor the energy lost with the kinetic of the motion, energy will be conserved.

Answer 10

That, plus transferrence of energy, friction, gravity and elasticity