What you need:
A wooden stake and a tennis ball
What you do:
Fix the wooden stake in the ground and place a tennis ball on it top.
Release the ball and observe the height of the first bounce. Do this thrice to get an average of the bouncing height. Mark the height on the stake.
Place the ball in the freezer for about an hour.
Again measure the height of the ball’s first bounce when released from the top of the stake.
What you find:
The ball does not bounce as high when it is chilled.
Why?
The reason is that the rubber is made of thousands of small molecules joined to form long chains. At room temperature, the chains push together and pull apart with ease and this flexibility of the chains allows the ball to bounce high. When the ball is chilled, the chains of molecules become rigid and the ball cannot bounce as high as it did when it was warm, and the chains were flexible.
Picture Credit : Google
