A rubber ball is dropped from a height of 1.5 m onto a hard floor. The ball bounces back to a height of 1.1 m. Each bounce that follows is lower than the bounce before it. The ball, the floor and the air around them can be treated as a closed system.
Explain why the ball does not bounce back to its original height.
Explain why the total energy of the closed system does not change.
The ball is dropped from the same height onto a thick carpet. Suggest why the ball bounces to a lower height than it did on the hard floor.
40 exam-style questions on AQA GCSE Physics 1.2 Conservation and dissipation of energy, covering 1.2.1 Energy transfers in a system and 1.2.2 Efficiency. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.