When a ball is above the table, the ball has some potential energy and when the ball is dropped from the table to the ground, that potential energy gets converted into kinetic energy.
But where does that energy go when the ball has dropped all the way to the ground? At the ground, the potential energy should be zero because no height and since the ball is not moving, the kinetic energy should also be zero. But according to the law of thermodynamics, “energy cannot be destroyed.” So my question is, where does the energy go when the ball reaches the ground?
In: Chemistry
When the ball hits the ground, it squishes like a spring, and then bounces back up. It’s not perfect though, so some of the energy gets lost along the way in the form of heat, sound and air resistance. Eventually, all of the energy is dissipated into the environment where you have a few marginally faster air molecules moving around.
You can see how much energy the ball loses with each bounce by looking at how high it gets before falling back down, since in a mathematically perfect scenario of 0% energy loss, it would always just bounce back up to exactly the original table height in an infinite cycle.
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