In: Chemistry
Out of idle speculation, you drop a metal ball from a height of 2 yards onto a sample cute from a plastic sheet. (You are an old-fashioned engineer and can have no truck with units such as meters.) You observe that the plastic sheet punctures in a ductile fashion, leaving a hole roughly the size of the ball. You find that if the same metal ball is dropped onto another sample of the same plastic sheet from a height of 4 yards, the sample shatters in a brittle manner. How would you explain these observations?