The following section is an excerpt from the example laboratory report, titled Proper Inflation of a Basketball. (The entire example report is available in either Microsoft Word Format for printing, or HTML format for online viewing.)
Introduction
Basketball is a game that relies on the skill of dribbling¾ that is, walking or running while bouncing the basketball on the floor. To play the game most effectively, players need to be able to rely on the rebounding of the ball off the floor as they move with it around the court. The "springiness" of the ball also affects shots that rebound off the backboard. The amount that the ball rebounds depends on how much air is used to inflate it. A ball with too little air is flat and difficult to dribble. A ball with too much air is too lively and more difficult to control when dribbling and shooting. Inflating a basketball with the correct amount of air is important to being able to play the game well.
According to international basketball rules, a basketball is properly inflated "such that when it is dropped onto the playing surface from a height of about 1.80 m measured from the bottom of the ball, it will rebound to a height, measured to the top of the ball, of not less than about 1.2 m nor more than about 1.4 m" (Fédération Internationale de Basketball 1998). Accounting for the 24-cm diameter of the ball, this means that a properly inflated ball rebounds to 62 ± 6% of the height from which it is dropped. Unfortunately, using this standard alone to determine when a ball is properly inflated implies a significant amount of trial and error¾ pump some air into the ball, remove the pump, drop the ball and test its rebounding, pump more air into the ball, and so forth. In this experiment, we develop a method to determine the correct number of strokes of a hand pump needed to correctly inflate a basketball, based on the size of the pump.
Note what's here: