Bouncing a Ball Teacher Resources

Here is a 14 minute episode of Elmo's World that focuses on balls. He talks to Dorothy the fish, shows clips of things people do with balls, and talks to kids about playing with balls. Tip: Tell your young learners that verbs are action...

Take part in a fun experiment and hold an impromptu bouncing contest with your class. Young scientists heat and cool balls before bouncing them to determine whether temperature changes affect how they bounce. The set of...

Bocce ball - instructional activity 6 takes the game indoors and makes some adaptations. Use bean bags or juggling balls that won't bounce too much to play indoors. The focus is on throwing and using good form. The strategy will be...

Students investigate different balls' abilities to bounce. They conduct a Ball Bounce Height Comparison and Ball Bounce Time Comparison, complete a worksheet, graph the results of their experiment, and answer investigating questions.

Combine square dancing and a Swiss ball. There are quite a few square dance moves and how to do them while sitting on, or carrying a Swiss ball. Teach these square dance moves to the class. Then have them work together in small groups to...

Enhance your states of matter lessons with a hands-on science investigation that compares six different balls' color, texture, size, weight, ability to bounce, and buoyancy. 

Steve Spangler plays a sneaky trick on Mark by giving him a rubber ball that doesn't bounce! Video viewers learn that different types of rubber have different properties. Show this in your physical science unit when teaching the...

Upper elementary scientists test basketballs with differing amounts of air to find if inflation affects bounce height. The instructional activity introduction poses the question of whether or not the composition of a ball determines...

Don't drop the ball—use a unique resource to teach your class even more about pi! Given a situation about balls bouncing off each other, viewers see how many bounces it takes for the larger ball to move in the other direction. This...

How high will it bounce? Groups determine the height different balls bounce off of different surfaces. By performing the necessary calculations, they determine the initial and final momentum of the balls. The included worksheet provides...

Students explore the concept of motion. In this hands-on physics lesson, students examine how the construction of baseballs and the temperature they are stored at affect their bounce.

Can you get a golf ball to bounce 28 feet high? The video demonstrates the impressive bounce of a stacked ball drop. After explaining the physics of the ball drop and bounce, the video relates it to supernovas. The science content comes...

Create your own bouncing ball program with this guided activity. Java Script code that sends a ball down the screen is provided. The task is to fix the code to make it bounce up when it hits the bottom of the screen and then down again...

Kinematic equations are used to calculate the velocity and momentum of different types of balls bounced on different surfaces. The lesson plan is detailed and provides a materials list, background information, and procedures....

Use geometry to improve your pool game! Learners analyze the front half of a pool shot to determine its resulting path. By measuring the angle of incidence, they are able to predict the path of the ball. 

Help your young athletes practice hitting a ball with these fun activities. Bring in all kinds of soft bats and soft balls. Experiment with hitting balls using different size bats. Work on hand-eye coordination. Teach them the optimum...

Students explore the concepts of potential and kinetic energy by bouncing assorted balls on different surfaces and calculating the momentum for each ball. They give examples of collisions and momentum in sports and understand that...

Students collect height versus time data of a bouncing ball using the CBR 2™ data collection device. Using a quadratic equation they graph scatter plots, graph and interpret a quadratic function, apply the vertex form of a quadratic...

A bouncing ball serves as more than entertainment when learning to apply quadratic functions to real-world events. This is the second of a two-part lesson, which can also be accessed from the website. The instructions say to measure the...

This highly scaffolded, summative assessment tasks learners to choose the model that represents the height of a bouncing basketball given the data in graph and table form. Learners then use the model to answer questions about the...

This un-scaffold summative assessment tasks learners to use the height of a bouncing basketball, given the data in graph and table form, to choose the model that is represented. Learners then use the model to answer questions about...

That's the way the ball bounces ... or does it? An episode of a physics playlist examines the behavior of different types of balls when kicked. Learners experience the magnus effect as they watch while one ball curves to the...

New skills are developed as high schoolers use graphing calculators and ranger technology to capture and graph the sequence of bounces a ball makes when dropped. After recording the height of four or more bounces, they use the collected...

Students experiment with varied balls to determine the bounce factor in centimeters. In this physics lesson plan, students experiment to find the height a ball must be dropped from the have the highest bounce rate. Students graph the...