Exp 5

course phy 201

This expierment was to analyze the motion of a large steel ball and a small steel ball after a center to center collision. I set up to ramps that were the same length , but with different slopes so I could get the balls to collide exactly where the two ramps met. The small ball was on a slope of about.08 and the large was about .065. The ramp length was 30.5 cm. I timed the balls several times and did a couple of trial runs to make sure the balls were colliding at the exact instant. The small ball had a mass of 27g and the large ball a mass of 68g. Once the balls collided the small ball changed directions and went 12 cm in the direction it came from; the large ball progressed another 3.5 cm. I used my dt and ramp L to calculate the V and the a of the two balls before collision. I then used the form F = ma to calculate the force the two balls collided with. The small ball impacted with .007 N and the large one with .017 N. I then used the known acceleration of the ramp that the small ball was on to calculate the V of the balls after collision. The Vsmall was 39.89 --> before collision and 25.014 <-- after collision. The Vlarge was 39.61 <-- before collision and 12.507 <-- after collision.

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Some of those velocities are positive and some are negative, depending on which direction you choose as positive.

To what extent do your results indicate conservation of momentum?