Question

1. Suppose a new tennis ball drops downward from a height of 30 feet onto a paved parking lot and keeps

bouncing up and down, again and again. Rebound height of the ball should be of its drop height. Make
a table and plot the data showing expected heights of the first ten bounces of the tennis ball.
Bounce Number 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10
Rebound Height (in feet) ??

Answer 1

Answer: Let's assume that each time the ball rebounds, it bounces back up to exactly 2/3 of its previous height. We can use this information to create a table and plot the expected rebound heights for the first ten bounces.

Bounce Number Rebound Height (feet)

0 30.0

1 20.0

2 13.3

3 8.9

4 5.9

5 3.9

6 2.6

7 1.7

8 1.1

9 0.7

10 0.5

To plot this data, we can use a scatter plot with the bounce number on the x-axis and the rebound height on the y-axis. The points should be connected by a line to show the trend.

Tennis ball bounce heights

Note that the rebound heights decrease quickly and approach zero, but they never actually reach zero due to the rounding in our calculations.

Explanation: