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The Science of Basketball: By:kaiden

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6 views

The Science of Basketball: By:kaiden

Uploaded by

kaidenellington00
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The science of basketball

By:kaiden
Origins of
Basketball
• Basketball is considered the first
sport that completely originated in
the United States. It was invented in
December of 1891 when Dr. James
Naismith nailed up some peach
baskets in a gym. Basketballs today
are designed to bounce around the
court and soar in an orange arc from
your hands into the basket
• When the sport was first invented soccer balls
were used and players had a harder time
holding on to and dribbling the ball than they
did shooting a basket. The orange, bumpy ball
we know today was developed as a result of
problems players were having trying to play
this brand new game.
• Changes they made to the ball included
making them bigger and adding bumps to the
leather surface. This added bounce and
friction to the equation. Modern basketballs
are hollow with an inflatable inner rubber
bladder and have a small opening that lets you
control the air pressure. This hollow center is
generally wrapped in layers of fiber and finally
covered with leather, which is usually bright
orange so players can easily see them. They
took a problem – slippery, not so bouncy ball –
and engineered a solution!
Why do they
bounce?

• When you dribble a basketball, your hand and


gravity both push the ball towards the ground
(Law #1). As it drops, the ball accelerates and
speeds up (Law #2). It wants to stay in motion
so the ball pushes into the ground when it hits,
compressing the air inside. The ground
pushes up with an equal, but opposite amount
of force resulting in the ball bouncing back up
in to your hand (Law #3). The energy in the
compressed air is transferred back to the ball
pushing it back into motion. If you were to take
your hand away and stop dribbling, the ball
would continue to bounce due to Newton’s first
law, but would slow down and eventually stop
due to friction.
• The more air pressure inside, the
harder it will push on the sides of the
ball and the more bounce you’ll get.
This is why an under inflated ball
won’t bounce very well because
there is not enough air pressure
inside to maintain the forces
necessary for bounce.
Why the bumps?
• So the last detail they added to their new ball was little bumps
on the surface of the leather called pebbling. Adding these
bumps was all about friction. When forces collide, friction
naturally slows things down over time and the more points of
contact an object has with another surface the more friction
comes into play. So the bumps on the basketball basically
increase the surface area of the ball and the amount of friction
acting on it. This makes the pebbled ball ideal for a player to
grip, pass quickly, and dribble without fear that the ball will slip
away in a random direction.

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