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Traveling by Bounces

By David Calderon L.
To find the total distance that a ball travels by dropping it from certain height I first took a video of the ball being dropped as you can see in video 1. I uploaded this video in a program called "kinoveo" which will allow me to have an approximation of the ball' s height in every bounce.The first thing you see in the video is a green line with a measurement of 1.06 meters.This is my reference height and that was measured with a measuring tape in the classroom from the floor to the bottom of the little white square.Then after that you began to see the ball being dropped and in every bounce a green line appears which is the height that the ball had bounced.All the measurements of the bounces are in (step 1) with the subtitle "Actual Height for Bounce".Between each bounce you can find the difference of the ball' s height after every bounce named "Difference".And in the last parallel line you can find the percentage of reduction in height in every bounce named "Percentage %".For example, at first the ball was at a height of 1.65 m and after it bounced the 1 st time the height was 1.29 m, the difference between these heights was .36 m and the percentage of reduction was .78.This means that the ball bounced .78 % less than its 1 st height.Then in the 2 nd bounce the ball reached a height of 1 m and the difference between this and the 1 st bounce (which was 1.29 m) is .29 m, this time the percentage of reduction in height was .76.And again this means that the ball bounced .76 % less than the 1 st bounce.I did this process for each of the bounces of the ball.In (Step 2) I was trying to find the total average in change or my ratio.To find this I added all the percentages and divided by 17 which is the number of percentages in my calculations not counting the last 0. According to this my Ration is .74.To check my calculation in (Step 3) I tried to find n or my height.For example to find H (0), which was my first height, I multiplied my 1 st height times my ratio (.74) to the power of 0 which gave me 1.65.To find the height after the 1 st bounce I multiplied my 1 st height by my ratio to the power of 1, this gave me 1.22 which is an approximation of my measurement.The to find the height after the second bounce I multiplied my initial height time my ratio to the power of 2, this gave me .9, which again is not exact but is a good approximation.And I can do this for all or them; I just have to substitute H (0) by my "initial height" (1.65), r which is my "ratio" (.74), and n by the bounce that I would like to know its height.For example, if I want to know the height after the 22 bounce I just have to substitute n by 22. Then in (Step 4) I will use the formula S = a/(1 - r) which will take the limit of my geometric sequence which give me 6.35 m.Another way to get the distance is by using a "Infinite Sum "(Step 5) which I substitute the numbers in and just as you can see it give me the same distance traveled.Now lets understand that the ball travels up and down and we are only adding one height which is the way up.Now to add the two distances (up and down) lets multiply our total distance times 2 which in this case is 6.35*2 (Step 6), this is because we already have one half of the distance (up), we just need the other half (down), this gave us 12.7.(Step 7).Now that we have this total distance lets subtract 1.65, this is because before the ball started to bounce it was already up in 1.65 m and if we don' t subtract this we are saying that that ball traveled two time the height of 1.65 m.Now that we have subtracted 1.65 m we can be sure to say that the total distance that the ball traveled was 11.05 meters.

Video 1
http : youtu.be 3 Qb8bE93Y1w

Printed by Mathematica for Students

Bounce Ball Projct 1.nb

Step 1
Actual Height for Bounce
1.65 m .36 1.29 m .29 1m .22 .78 m .16 .62 m .12 .5 m .07 .43.m .08 .35 m .06 .29 m .01 .28 m .03 .25 m .08 .17 m .03 .14 m .06 .10 m .02 .08 m .03 .05 m .02 .03 m .02 .01 m .0 .01 m 0 .34 .6 .62 .8 .71 .82 .68 .89 .96 .83 .81 .86 .80 .79 .78 .76 .78

Differemce

Persentage %

Step 2
Total Average in Change (ratio)
In[5]:= Out[5]=

.78

.76

.78

.79

.80

.86

.81

.83

.96

.89

.68

.62

.71

.8

.62

.6

.34

17

0.742941

Printed by Mathematica for Students

Bounce Ball Projct 1.nb

Step 3
Finding
n

H0 r

H0 H1 H2

1.65 .74 ^ 0 1.65 .74 ^ 1 1.65 .74 ^ 2

1.65 1.22 .9

Step 4
a S 1 r
In[7]:= Out[7]=

1.65

.74

6.34615

Step 5
n nr n 0
In[8]:=

1.65
n 0

.74 ^ n

Out[8]=

6.34615

Step 6
In[9]:= Out[9]=

6.35 12.7

Step 7
In[10]:= Out[10]=

12.7 11.05

1.65

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