Rubber is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex which is a milky colloid produced by some plants. It is used to manufacture among others tires and tubes as well as some households.
Rubber is usually vulcanised to improve its resilience and elasticity and prevent it from perishing.
Rubber is made up from long tangled strings of carbon attached at different points along its length to other strings of carbon. A useful way to think of this is to think of a bowl of spaghetti, where all the strands are attached to other strands at random points along their length.
Why Do Rubber Balls Bounce?
Rubber bounces because of its release of pressure from the compression of the molecules. Simply put, when rubber meets a non-moving object, it builds up compressed energy. This energy is then instantly released by the rubber regaining its original form. The harder you throw the bouncy ball, the more the strands will be compressed when they hit the ground and the higher the ball will bounce.
Energy in Elastic Materials
An object can store energy as the result of its position. This stored energy of position is referred to as potential energy. Potential energy is the stored energy of position possessed by an object. Elastic potential energy is the energy stored in elastic materials as the result of their stretching or compressing. Elastic potential energy can be stored in rubber bands, bungee cords, trampolines, springs, an arrow drawn into a bow, etc. The amount of elastic potential energy stored in such a device is related to the amount of stretch of the device - the more stretch, the more stored energy.
Rate of Reaction
The speed at which a chemical reaction proceeds is called the rate of reaction. It is often expressed in terms of either the concentration (amount per unit volume) of a product that is formed in a unit of time or the concentration of a reactant that is consumed in a unit of time. The factors of rate of reaction include concentration, surface area, temperature and the use of a catalyst.
How does temperature affect the rate of reaction?
Particles can only react when they collide. If you heat a substance, the particles move faster and so collide more frequently. That will speed up the rate of reaction. Heating chemical substances can make the molecules separate and move around faster. This is not always the case, some chemicals will only react when cold.
Collision Theory In order for a reaction to occur, the reactant molecules have to collide with each other with sufficient energy. At any given temperature, some molecules move very slowly and some move faster. The more collisions means that the rate of reaction will increase and the quicker new bonds form.
Pressure
Pressure is defined as force per unit area. It is usually more convenient to use pressure rather than force to describe the influences upon fluid behavior. The standard unit for pressure is the Pascal, which is a Newton per square meter.
Trends and relationships
There were some trends and relationships between the observations and results. When the test of bounce was done, the ball did not bounce back up very high. When the ball was in the higher temperatures, the ball had a higher bounce. This reflects the results as the highest temperature of water (45oC) had a bounce height of 80.2cm and the lowest temperature of water (5oC) had the height which was 65.8cm. This supports that as the temperature is goes higher, the bounce height also increases and as the temperature goes lower the bounce height decreases.
Reflection on the background information o The ball that was submerged in the highest temperature of water (45
C) had the highest bounce o height which was 80.2cm. The ball that was submerged in the lowest temperature of water (5
C) had the height which was 65.8cm. According to my results, as the temperature increased, the bounce height increased.
This backed up my background information, when the temperature increases, particles