Team Number: 34
Team Number: 34
School Name: Las Cruces High School
Area of Science: Physics
Project Title: Making Basketball More Fun
Definition: The air is filled with many gases, each with different properties. If we were to fill a regulation basketball with other types of gases, how would this effect the ball's bounce and weight, and what differences would occur during normal game play?
Purpose: We will attempt to simulate the changes influenced by variables, such as the height the ball is dropped from, how much pressure is used, and more, to try to find out if any gas has better attributes than what is normally used in basketballs today. Basically to make it more fun.
Expected Results: We hope that we can make an accurate simulation with a number of variables, based on facts from science books, encyclopedias, and other reference materials.
Generally, cold balls are less bouncy than warm ones. That's because cold rubber is generally not as flexible as warm rubber. When a cold ball hits the floor, the deformation that follows the collision is concentrated at the bottom of the ball. This concentrated deformation causes the rubber molecules to collide with each other, producing warmth rather than rebound. The one exception is the no-bounce ball. A cold no-bounce ball actually bounces better than a room temperature one. pV=nRT p is the pressure and V is the volume and n is the number of moles, R=0.0821 L atm mol-1 K-1 (that is, R is the gas constant), and T is the temperature.Team Members
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