Monday, July 18, 2011
3 Bouncing Balls
Left: Heavy Ball
Middle: Ping-pong Ball?
Right: Balloon
The steps were pretty much the same as the bouncing ball. However, this time, we are only concerned about the height of the ball.
Physics
Although things fall at the same speed for the initial fall, the weight of the heavy ball and the ping-pong ball is different, so the heavy ball experiences a greater loss in height than the ping-pong ball when it bounces back. This also means that the heavy ball will stop bouncing first, while the ping-pong ball will take a while longer to stay on air.
The balloon will fall slower however due to air resistance. So it takes a longer time to land. My animation is not perfect, but the balloon will also experience bouncing but at a slower speed.
Process
The process was the same as the bouncing ball, except that the end time has to be constantly changed when we move from one ball to another, as each ball will take different amount of time to finish its animation.
The key-frames were again set on the extremes of the animation (the highest and lowest point that the balls can reach). Because the heavy ball falls faster (or as least it appears to be, since that would contradict what I say earlier), the intervals between the keyframes for the heavy ball is smaller, compared to the ping-pong ball, while the balloon has the largest intervals between keyframes.
Unlike the bouncing ball, I used the time slider to adjust and scale the intervals instead of using the graph editor to scale. It is much more easier to do the scaling in the time slider.
The graph editor is still important though, so that the balls lands smoothly and not stay on the air at the highest point for too long.
Reflection
This exercise allow us to teach us about observing the weight of the bouncing balls. The weight and the air resistance of the bouncing ball will affect how it is pulled by gravity and how it bounces back. I feel that this exercise is pretty useful because it allow us to see the flaws in our work from one ball to another. For example, if the heavy ball and the ping-pong ball stops bouncing at the same time, then we will know that the timing is some kind of wrong.
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