Why does Rubber Bounce?
Answer Scott, thanks for passing by. I really appreciate your question. And what a brilliant question it is. So obvious, but no-one thinks to ask it! The short answer is that not all rubber does bounce. If you drop a ball of butyl rubber, for example, it drops and just stops with no bounce at all. But of course you are right, most rubber does bounce, and bounce pretty well at that. It’s down to a number of factors, which can be described in various levels of sophistication. I am not sure what level of explanation you are looking for, so I’m going to try a couple of guesses at what type of thing you are after. At the most simple, there is something called the coefficient of restitition. This basically is an engineering number which says if you drop a ball from 1 metre high onto a solid, flat, rigid sheet, then if it bounces back to 0.9 metres, the coefficient of restitution is 90 percent. (actually, you have to set up the experiment to ignore gravity, so everything has to be on its side
