Its All About The Bounce

Abstract

The difference between many basketball courts and their bounce rate has always interested me. That is why I chose to test three different basketball courts to see which court made a boys basketball bounce the highest. The courts that I tested were a wooden court, a rubber court, and a concrete court. I thought that the wooden court would have the highest bounce because that is what most professional basketball courts use.

At each different court I dropped the basketball from two meters in the air. After the ball was dropped, I caught the basketball at its highest point. Once I caught it, I measured the highest point for each bounce. I did this five times at each court and calculated an average. All of the drops and measurements were measure from the bottom of the ball.

After testing each court I found out that the wooden court, with and average of 113.4 centimeters, factored into having the basketball bounce the highest. The rubber basketball court was very close but only had a 110.8 centimeters bounce average. Concrete had the least bounce average because it was 98 centimeters.

Between all three courts I have concluded that the wooden basketball court made a men's basketball bounce 2.6 centimeters higher than the rubber court and 15.4 centimeters higher than the concrete court. Doing this project could help realize a factor that contributes to why so many stadiums and courts use wooden floors, it could be because they are bouncier. My hypothesis was correct because I thought the wooden court would be the bounciests and I was correct. There were many variables that could of altered my experiment, but I tried to steer away from them. Not having a steady hand could have affected my experiment and dead spots in the court could have also altered my experiment, but where I tested there were none. If I do this experiment again I would do the experiment with a more steady hand and I would do it more time to get a more accurate answer.