Question 11/98

BOUNCING BRICK

A heavy brick is falling from a height of 1 meter, hits a tennis ball and jumps back to the height of (almost) 1 meter. (We assume that the mass of the tennis ball is negligible compared to the mass of the brick. The collision with the ball is assumed to be elastic, i.e. there is no energy loss.) To what height will the tennis ball jump?






This was one of the Physics Olympics questions in the Soviet Union (R.I.P.)

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