Collisions Lab

Purpose: The purpose of the Collision lab was to find out the speed(v) of the cars that were in the collision. We calculated the momentum and total energy before and after for the inelastic and elastic collisions. 

Big Question: 

What is the difference between the amount of energy lost

in an Elastic Collision vs Inelastic Collision?

The difference between the amount of energy lost in an Elastic collision vs. Inelastic collision is that in one of the collision, the amount of energy before and after had a much larger drop. 

What is a better conserved quantity - momentum or energy?

The momentum is better conserved since the energy will always be changing. 

Whiteboard/ Data 

 

Whiteboard shows my group's calculations for the total momentum and energy before and after also including the % difference.

This is the calculations that my group used to get the calculations for the whiteboard. 

Real Life Connection:  Two baseball players colliding at home plate is how this lab connects to real life. The person that falls back depends on the speed of the person running and the mass. The catcher was not moving so the other person had more speed which is why the catcher is falling backwards.