A Bouncing Ball
December 2, 2011 at 6:35 am
(This post was last modified: December 2, 2011 at 6:36 am by The_Flying_Skeptic.)
In physics, my group was assigned to find a function that described the height of the ball by the number of bounces from the height it was dropped.
The physics professor memorized that the function was h(n) = He^-kn
H being the height the ball was dropped from, and h being the height of the ball after n bounces.
or something like that.
from 1 meter, our formula was e^-0.0152n
Why does that formula make sense?
I was getting close to something like it on my own, but I wasn't sure if e was going to be involved. My group was lame and didn't bother trying to understand why the exponential trend line of our data on Excel made sense. 2:40AM here and I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about this.
The physics professor memorized that the function was h(n) = He^-kn
H being the height the ball was dropped from, and h being the height of the ball after n bounces.
or something like that.
from 1 meter, our formula was e^-0.0152n
Why does that formula make sense?
I was getting close to something like it on my own, but I wasn't sure if e was going to be involved. My group was lame and didn't bother trying to understand why the exponential trend line of our data on Excel made sense. 2:40AM here and I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about this.
