Can someone calculate the rebound factor of a rubber ball?
The wiki below tells you all you need to know about heights, energies, losses and the coefficient of restitution. Sorry I lost the plot earlier. When a ball of a certain substance bounces, the root-ratio of successive heights of bounce is called the Coefficient of Restitution. So if the initial height is H1 and the first bounce reaches H2, the coefficient CR is given by CR = (H2/H1)^0.5 This can be rearranged to give H2 = H1(CR^2) This is a shorthand way to arrive at the result. Really, we should take into account the energy losses in the impact. These will include the energy required to deform the ball and the surface, the sound effect, the heat created by friction and molecular interaction, and so on. In principle, the ball will retain its mass during the impact and any bounce. In reality, there will be small loss of mass at each bounce because material will be rubbed off and there will be relativistic energy loss due the change of acceleration and so of momentum. But these will be a
