Why a slightly cracked ping-pong ball barely bounces.
In: Physics
The ping pong ball deforms when it hits a surface, storing up the energy of its collision in that deformation to be released when it returns to its former shape.
By being cracked the ball isn’t able to transfer the energy of the impact into changing the shape of parts of the ball beyond the crack, meaning those parts cannot store and release energy to make it bounce.
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