Why do long elastic bands stretch further than short elastic bands?

If there is more elastic there is more elastic to stretch this means the actual extension is longer.

For example if you take one piece of elastic and attach a weight to the end of it while it is fixed to something eg. a table and then drop it off the edge of the table you can measure the difference between the extended length and the non stretched elastic. You can repeat this as many times as you like to make sure you have the correct length. Repeat this with continually longer pieces of elastic and you should see a noticeable difference in the length of extension.

For this experiment you will need a mass, that will remain constant; Varying lengths of elastic, blu tac or another method to attach the elastic to a table, and some way of measuring the lengths of the elastic and its extension.

Throughout this experiment your dependent varible will be the length of the extended piece of elastic, Your independent varible will be the un-extended length of the elastic, and your control varible is the mass attached to the elastic. There are many risks with this experiment that may cause harm to the scientist conducting it.

For example throwing or dropping the mass at your toe can result can in a broken toe. This can be reduced by getting a responsible adult to carry the weight for you. In addition to this the elastic may well snap and hit you in the face. If it catches your eye this can blind you. To reduce the chance of this happening, wear goggles or other eye protection.

A context of this investigation would be: "How does the length of a bungee cord affect how far the bungee jumper will fall down."

This answer is very useful for anybody completing The physics ISA (4403) in June 2012.