Can you reconcile this energy

Question

. Place a small rubber ball on top of a basketball or soccer
ball and then drop them together. If vertical alignment nicely
remains as they fall to the floor, you’ll see that the small ball
bounces unusually high. Can you reconcile this with energy
conservation?

Answer 1

When a soccer ball is dropped and strikes the floor its bounces back. During collision at floor kinetic energy just before it hits the ground is converted in potential energy. This potential energy is caused due to compression of soccer ball. As the compressed potential energy is release ball bounces back but not to the same height as some energy is lost during collision in terms of heat, sound etc.

 

Now the same thing happens to the small ball. Kinetic energy acquired by it just before soccer ball hits the floor is converted to potential energy due to compression in small ball and soccer ball. Since soccer ball is more elastic than the floor it tends to compress more and impart more compressed potential energy to the small ball. Act similar to a trampoline. Loss of energy during impact between small ball and soccer ball is relative less in terms of heat and sound. Since small ball has less mass the potential energy imparted by soccer ball to small ball is enough to push it to big height.

 

Since the total energy conversion is constant. Without the small ball soccer ball will bounce back  to higher height. The difference may be difficult to measure but there would be a change.

 

Hope this helps.

:)

Answer 2

The total energy of the system basketball+rubber ball is conserved in this process, so the total initial potential energy equals the total final potential energy (the initial and final kinetic energies are zero). However, right after the two balls bounce, the larger basketball will collide with the rubber ball, imparting some of its momentum to the rubber ball, giving it a higher kinetic energy than it had right before the collision. Therefore, the rubber ball will bounce up higher and the basketball will bounce up a little lower, relative to where they started.