Bouncing Balls Investigation

Project #1358 on iSENSEProject.org

Bouncing Balls Investigation

In the Bouncing Balls Investigation, students asked the question,

"Do all balls bounce to the same height?"

To answer this question, students individually dropped five different ball types (basketball, rubber ball, wiffle ball, golf ball and soccer ball) from a height of 1 meter.  They measured and recorded the height of the bounce for each ball and created a bar graph showing their data.  In addition, students identified the Independent, Control and Independent variables within the confines of their investigation.

Questions to Help You Explore the Data...

1.  When looking at the default graph that displays when you first visualize this project, which ball
     has the highest bounce height?  How about the lowest bounce height?

2.  Look at the data line for golf ball.  What might be some reasons for the sudden dip in bounce
    height that group 3 recorded?

3.  Look at the bar graph that shows the average bounce height by ball type.  What ball had the
    highest bounce and what ball had the lowest bounce?  Were the results from this graph the same
    as for the default graph you viewed?

4.  What are some other Control Variables we would need to put in place in order to collect 
     data that has better accuracy?

Note:  The source for this data is taken directly from a 5th grade investigation we conducted in class on September 11th.  I broke the class into five groups and all the data I entered came directly from data recorded by students on their investigation reports.