Snow Day Blog Fun With Balls

Momentum Snow Day Blog

For this blog I was able to to demonstrate the conservation of energy by colliding two balls. The two white balls I had found look very similar so one will be called Jerry and the other will be called Tom. 

To find the conservation of energy the equation is used as follows:

                                       m1v1 + m2v2 = m1vf1 + m2vf2

This is the video of Jerry and Tom colliding:

In this video we can see that Tom is sitting still and Jerry rolls and hits Tom which changes the speed and direction. 

From Logger Pro I found the Speed of Tom and Jerry :

Tom(not moving) : Vi = 0 m/s            Vf = .23 m/s

Jerry (moving) :     Vi = .61 m/s         Vf = .17 m/s 

Weights: 

Tom = .03 kg 

Jerry = .08 kg 

Calculations

From the equation above we can find if any kinetic energy was lost during the collision. 

The initial and final are almost similar but different due to the human error in calculating velocity with Logger Pro. Friction might have also acted on this which would create some error. 

Since this is an elastic collision kinetic energy should be conserved but with my calculations, some kinetic energy was lost. 

Demonstrating a perfect elastic collision in a non perfect world is hard but this was the closest I could get.