Conservation of Momentum in Explosion

In order to find a way to show the conservation of momentum, I decided to make an explosion that would mean that the sum of the initial momentums of two objects would be 0 and then the sum of each of the object's final momentum would have to equate to 0 as well. In the process of deciding how to demonstrate an explosion in the video, I decided that I would make sure that there was only a small amount of friction by using the floor and two wheely chairs in the hallway in the science building.

First I weighed the chair and the person to find the mass of the two objects together so that I could account for them to be the same object.

Object 1: Yufan and chair - 61 kg

Object 2: Katherine and chair - 51 kg

Here is the video of the explosion:

After analyzing the video on logger pro, I found Object 1's velocity to be -0.2675 m/s.

Object 2's momentum was 0.3158 m/s.

As can be seen from the calculations on the left, momentum was not completely conserved which is most likely to errors in plotting points. In addition, some friction can be accounted for. However, the initial and final momentum is relatively almost equivalent.



KE initial: 0 J
KE final: 0.5 * 61 * 0.2675^2  +  0.5 * 51 * 0.3158^2 = 4.7 J

Therefore, 4.7 J of kinetic energy was lost in the interaction.