Activity17: Basic Video Processing

For this activity, we asked to perform an experiment where video processing can be applied to determine the desired kinematic variables. Marge, angel, and I therefore decided to determine the coefficient of restitution of a bouncing object initially dropped at a certain height.

The Coefficient of Restitution for an object that bounces off a stationary object is given by the equation below, where h is the bounce height, and H is the drop height.

C = sqrt (h/H)

To start, the grayscale images of the desired frames acquired from the video using VirtualDub are shown below.

Figures: drop image and bounce image respectively

Due to the inconsistency in the background color and error at the direction at which the video was taken, which were not considered while filming the video, a manual technique was used to determine the coefficient of restitution.

The required heights were measured using Paint. The calculated drop and bounce heights are 60.54 and 54.71 pixels respectively. Therefore, the coefficient of restitution was determined to be 0.95.

rating: 5 bec. image processing was not used