• Question: Can everything bounce even if it isn't visible to the eye?

    Asked by pinkflower24 to Antoine, Daniel, James, Julie, Saima on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: James Hickey

      James Hickey answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Hi pinkflower24! I’m no bounce-specialist but I think the degree to which materials bounce is governed by how elastic they behave.

      A rubber ball is made up of lots of connected and tangled strands, so when you throw it at the floor they compress. Eventually they compress so much that they must bounce back to their original shape, which causes the ball to bounce up into the air. This material property is called ‘elasticity’ (like in an elastic band).

      Some materials are very elastic, while others are not. So to answer your question things that are very elastic will bounce a lot (like a rubber ball), while things that are not very elastic (like a brick) will not bounce very much (maybe at a scale we can’t see with our eyes, as you said), or maybe even not at all.

      Hope that helps.

    • Photo: Saima Rehman

      Saima Rehman answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Well, a famous scientist “Newton” (I am sure, you’ve heard about him??) explained it in his 3rd law. That every action has an equal reaction, but in opposite direction. I explain it with the example you asked in your question. When anything bounce on a ground (it’s action), the ground hits it back with the same force (that’s reaction). But it depends how “elastic” is that thing and also there are many other factors. If it’s very elastic, like a “bingo-ball”, it was bounce back easily and quickly. But if it is something less/non elastic and hard, like a book, it will not bounce. Then there are some other factors, like frictions, how smooth is the surface, gravity, moving energy of the thing, and most important is elastic energy of the thing.

    • Photo: Julie Speakman

      Julie Speakman answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Hello again pinkflower24! It also depends what you mean by bounce – if we look deep deep inside materials down to molecules and atoms there is lots of toing and froing and collisions, which you could call bouncing. And the hotter they are the faster they move around. We definitely can’t see those just with our eyes but they are still happening.

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