A simple experiment carried out with readily available equipment is used to investigate the interesting physics that occurs when a ball is bounced on a flat surface and left to continue bouncing until it stops. A solution well known from introductory physics courses is that if a ball loses a fraction of its energy on each bounce, then it will bounce infinitely many times in a finite time interval. A convolutional model of the sound a bouncing ball makes is created using an impulse response function and a prediction based on energy loss that the sound amplitudes will decay linearly to zero as the ball stops bouncing. Strategies for data analysis using correlation and deconvolution with the impulse response function are shown to simplify the picking of bounce times. Observations from several data examples show that the convolutional model is a good description of the real data and that we observe a linear decrease in sound amplitude consistent with the model prediction.

中文翻译：

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弹跳球的调查

使用现成的设备进行的简单实验可用来研究有趣的物理现象，当球在平坦的表面上弹起并继续弹跳直至停止时，会发生这种现象。基础物理学入门课程中众所周知的解决方案是，如果球在每次弹跳中损失一部分能量，那么它将在有限的时间间隔内无限次弹跳。使用脉冲响应函数和基于能量损失的预测来创建弹跳球发出的声音的卷积模型，即随着球停止弹跳，声音振幅将线性衰减至零。显示了使用相关性和反卷积以及脉冲响应功能进行数据分析的策略，可以简化跳动时间的选择。