1/2 and 1/3 1/4. Is the answer I automatically thought of
Step-by-step explanation:
Let the height above which the ball is released be H
This problem can be tackled using geometric progression.
The nth term of a Geometric progression is given by the above, where n is the term index, a is the first term and the sum for such a progression up to the Nth term is
To find the total distance travel one has to sum over up to n=3. But there is little subtle point here. For the first bounce ( n=1 ), the ball has only travel H and not 2H. For subsequent bounces ( n=2,3,4,5...... ), the distance travel is 2×(3/4)n×H
a=2H..........r=3/4
However we have to subtract H because up to the first bounce, the ball only travel H instead of 2H
Therefore the total distance travel up to the Nth bounce is
For N=3 one obtains
D=3.625H
