Editing Transfer Of Energy (section)

== Why It Is ==

After dropping the balls, the soccer ball hits the ground first. Because we held the tennis ball above, but not touching, the soccer ball, it doesn’t collide with the soccer ball until the soccer ball has left the ground on its way up. The soccer ball hasn’t gone very high after colliding with the ground and didn’t lose much energy in the ground collision, so most of its initial energy is in the form of KE that is transferred to the tennis ball when the two collide. This gives the tennis ball more energy than it initially had, so it can bounce higher than the initial height that it was dropped from. The closer you hold the two balls, the higher the tennis ball should go because you are reducing the amount of time that the soccer ball will spend moving up after bouncing off the ground (decreasing the PE or, in other words, increasing the KE it has at the point of collision). Also, starting the two balls higher off the ground will provide more energy and, therefore, the tennis ball will bounce higher. Potential energy is given by U=mgh, where U is PE, m is the object’s mass, g is gravitational acceleration, and h is height.