course Phy 202
Run the program kinmodel, accepting all defaults by using the 'Enter' key to answer the prompts on your computer (the computer will then automatically pick the selection with the asterisk) and observe the particles or 'billiard balls' bouncing around the screen and off one another. * Watch the 'red' particle for a couple of minutes, estimating the average time between its collisions and its average speed (one of the speeds given near the top of the screen corresponds to that of the 'red' particle--which is it?).
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The red particle is represented by the first number at the top of the window.
* Watch the 'blue' particle, and speculate on what property of this particle is different from that of the other particles.
This particle has a larger mass than the others, as stated in the introduction.
* Watch as the 'red' particle sometimes turns yellow. What causes this? What property does the particle have when it is yellow?
I did not witness this happening during the time I was watching.
* What might the graphs represented at the right of the screen represent?
The line graphs might represent the proportional number of collisions for each of the thirty particles. These two graphs appear to be the same with the scale of the x-axis being different.
The other graph I had a lot of difficulty with. I'm guessing it may represent some sort of percentage, however, since the graph slowly gets more and more smooth as the program runs."
One graph represents the frequency distribution of different velocities. Velocity is on the horizontal axis, the frequency with which that velocity is observed is on the vertical. The graph is highest around 5 or so, corresponding to the most frequently observed velocities. Low and high velocities are less frequent and middle velocities are more frequent, so the graph starts out lower and ends up lower than in the middle.
The other graph a frequency distribution for kinetic energy. Since kinetic energy increases with velocity the graph has the same description as before; since KE is proportional to the square of velocity the concavity of the graph to the left and to the right of the peak is accentuated.