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.
For the same reason a leaking basketball barely bounces – air pressure.
I’m not sure if ping pong balls are positively charged with air or another gas, but they are sealed, so when they bounce, that air pocket is helping build potential energy in the form of increased air pressure in the ball as it deforms (volume decreased).
All that benefit goes away when the ball is even slightly cracked, since at that point it’s just a plastic shell and it just doesn’t have the ability to store potential energy on its own.
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