Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Yesterday I was playing basketball and someone left their old flat ball at the court. I picked it up and started shooting it and noticed it was harder to shoot than my regulation pressure ball. It felt as if I needed more force to get it to the rim than I did the inflated ball. My friend and I started theorizing on why this would be I brought up the idea that because the ball has a low psi it’s less buoyant than the ball with the higher psi. He disagreed with this and said that the difference in buoyancy would be almost immeasurable. After some more thinking he came up with the idea that the flat ball is harder to shoot because it’s absorbing more energy from the shot than then inflated ball, which also makes a lot of sense and thats what we ended up agreeing on because he was so persistent that the difference in buoyancy wouldn’t have effect on the ball. Does a balls PSI affect its buoyancy in the atmosphere and if so, by how much? What is the real reason the ball with the lower PSI required more force to travel the same distance? Any answers would be greatly appreciated!!!

Hi,

The difference in buoyancy would be quite limited: you can do some calculations, assuming that the only difference between inflated/deflated balls is the volume and weight of the air inside it.

A possible explanation would be that part of your force deforms a non-inflated ball. An extreme analogy would be trying to bat a baseball vs trying to bat a hack sack.

This forum is intended for students, parents, and teachers working on K-12 science projects. If you're interested in developing a science project out of this question, try to come up with some hypotheses and how you might validate them. If you are looking for general science discussions there are other sites that should be able to answer your question better.