The European Physical Journal B, 3, 45-57 (1998)

An experimental study of the behavior of one bead bouncing repeatedly off a static flat horizontal surface is presented. We observe that the number of bounces made by the bead is finite. When the duration between two successive bounces becomes of the order of the impact duration, the bead no longer bounces but oscillates on the elastically deformed surface before coming to rest. This transition is explained with a modified Hertz interaction law in which gravity is taken into account during the interaction. For each bounce, measurement of both the duration of collision and the restitution coefficient have been done. The effective restitution coefficient is essentially constant and close to 1 during almost all bounces before decreasing to zero when the impact velocity vanishes. This is due to an interplay between gravity and viscoelastic dissipation.