The Journal of Online Mathematics and Its Applications, Volume 7 (2007)
Bouncing Balls and Geometric Series, Robert Styer and Morgan Besson

Bounce Height and Time I

First, let's explore the relationship between the heights of the bounces. Let hn be the height of the nth bounce. Our basic assumption is that R = hn + 1 / hn, the ratio of the heights of successive bounces, is a constant; R is called the elasticity coefficient. We can easily find a general pattern relating all the heights to the first height.