Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi Everybody! This is my first time using this site so I will try and word this the best I can! So our school, has a science fair coming up soon and as a grade we gotta come up with a question. For my project, I really am into Basketball so I wanted to do something similar to it, My question was that "When you shoot a basketball above your shoulders and from your chest, Which position has a better chance of going in the hoop ? " But I don't like it...at all. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for a good science project related w/ basketball that's a appropriate for an 8th grader. Thanks everyone!

Hi Alexander,
Welcome to Science Buddies!

I guess the project that you looked at was this one:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p010.shtml

Here is another project from this site that involves basketball:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p021.shtml


If you're still looking for something different you can devise you own experiment. The first thing that comes to mind for me is how would a partially deflated ball affect game play?
You could time yourself and a few friends dribbling the ball up and down the court at maximum speed, and do this different amounts of air pressure in the ball. See if there is a pressure at which people can move the fastest. You would need an air pump that tells you the pressure in the ball as you are pumping it up.

Another thing you might measure is the how high the ball bounces when dropped from a fixed height at different air pressures. You could drop the ball from 10 feet in the
air every time on to pavement, and then measure the rebound height of the ball at different amounts of increasing air pressure.

Have Fun!

Thanks so much for the reply! Really appreciate it (: I was wondering though like... Is there a good experiment involving this thats my level, Which you dont have to test on humans? Bc it makes the variables a little more difficlt?