Abstract: Theoretical and experimental research on a usual kind of elastomer is presented,i. e.,elastic hoops are compressed on a hard surface. The relationship between the related parameters and the height the elastic hoops can reach when they are suddenly released. Our experiments show that for elastic hoops that are made of the same material,the maximum height of the hoop decreases as the radius of the hoop increases; the height increases as the thickness of the hoop increases; the height increases as the compression rate increases. The height is related to the air resistance in the experimentation environment,but has no relation to the width of the hoops. Our experiments also show that the height the elastic hoops can reach has no relation to the type of the hard surface they are compressed to. The comparison of our theoretical analysis with experiment results has shown that the fundamental physical nature of the elastic hoops＇ jump is the transformation of elastic potential energy to kinetic energy. Our experiment results match closely with theoretical analysis. The smart design of the experiments also illustrates a viable approach to explore such kind of elastomers.

Key words: elastic hoop, height of hoops＇ jump, energy conversion