Physics 1 - Lab Report 6 PDF

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Physics 1 lab report. ...

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TA Afrouz Experiment 6: Collision Purpose: The purpose of this experiment was to verify the energy conservation law when the potential energy of a ball is converted to its kinetic energy and to study elastic and inelastic collisions between two balls

Theory: In experiment six, we were testing how an energy is transferred after a collision. Two identical steel balls with the same mass m and a diameter d are suspended by two massless, non-stretchable strings. The separation of the two strings at their equilibrium positions is d. As both balls are not touching the y, they both have no potential energy (PE=0J). When ball 1 is pulled back from its equilibrium position (y) to a height h. The ball 1 gains potential energy U =mgh and also it gains a maximum velocity v, which means that it has kinetic energy 2 1 K= m v and maximum linear momentum 2

p=mv , just before it hits ball 2. The direction

of v is to the left and the magnitude of v is given by the energy conservation law:

1 U =K → mgh= m v 2 . Before collision the ball 2 is at rest, which means that 2 v 2=0→ p=0→ K=0 . An elastic collision is if both momentum and kinetic energy of the

two-ball system are conserved before and after the collision. An inelastic collision is if the momentum but not the kinetic energy of the two-ball system is conserved before and after the collision. Discussion & Conclusion: I think that my results for this lab were very good and were similar to the results on the book. I thought it was nice to actually see the difference between elastic and inelastic collision when preforming the lab meaning how the ball “bounce back” when elastic collision happens and how they stick together in inelastic. The purpose of this experiment was to demonstrate how collision

Bertellotti 2 happens and how the change in energy occurs. And by doing the calculations we were able to have the actual amount of energy that it is transferred and if the kinetic energy is conserved or not....