Bouncy Ball Experiment 

By: Kennedy, Nuha, Alex, AJ  

 
Question: When I change the shape of the bounce ball that I bounce, what will 
happen to the height of the bounce from the bouncy ball I bounce? 
 
Hypothesis: If the shape of the bouncy ball changes from smooth to bumpy , 
then the smooth ball will probably bounce higher than the bumpy bouncy ball. 
 
Materials: 
● Bouncy Ball  
● Bumpy Bouncy Ball 
● Meter Stick 
● Timer 
● Camera  
● People 
● Flat solid surface 
 
Procedure: 
1. Grab the bouncy ball off of the surface you put your materials on with 
your hand. 
2. Then extend your arm that you grabbed the ball with , so that your arm 
has an even line with you shoulder. Hand is pointed out, so put your 
hand out like you are going to fist bump someone then put your hand 
down mid ways. 
3. Before dropping the ball get a meter stick and put it by where you are 
going to be dropping the ball, and your camera ready 
4. Then drop the ball out of you hand without having to use any force just 
dropping the ball from your hand .   
5. Start the camera in slow motion 5 seconds early before dropping ball to 
be more ready, after 5 seconds drop the bouncy ball. 
6. Then record all data and how high the ball bounced. 
 7. Then do the same steps with the bumpy bouncy ball that you use 
8. Test three types and see out of the three which  
STOP! ONLY the above portion is due Thursday! 
 
 
 
 
 
Data: 
Independent  Dependent Variable:Height 
Variable:  
  Trial 1  Trial 2  Trial 3  Trial 4  Trial 5  Trial 6 
 
Smooth Ball  26in.  24in  25.5 in  23 .5 in  27 ¾ in  29.5 in 
Bumpy Ball  27in  30in  29in  30.5 in  32in  30.5 in 
 
Pattern: When I changed the shape of the ball from smooth to bumpy I found 
that the bumpy ball bounced higher. 
 
Analysis: Our group was very shocked about the outcome that we got, because 
in our hypothesis, we said that the smooth ball would go higher. We analyzed 
that the bumpy ball beat the smooth ball, in each trail that we did.  
 
 
  
 
Conciliation  
 
For this project the ending results that came from the data was that the 
bumpy ball bounced higher than the smooth. For this project our group 
was wondering how the bumpy ball would bounce higher than the smooth 
ball. 
 
One of our errors that we faced was that we had to order all of our 
trails,because they weren't in order to find out our data. Then that other 
problem that we had was that sometimes we weren't dropping the ball 
correctly, and the ball would not go in frame, and bump everywhere.Our 
hypothesis did not work,because it was off, we said that the smooth ball 
would bounce higher, but it didn't go that way, because the bumpy ball 
bounce higher. Another experiment that we could conduct using these 
experiment, is how many bounces are there from the ball, after you drop 
it. The dependent variable would be the bounce of the ball, and the 
independent variable would be the shape of the ball.