Collision 1D Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Collision 1D - Lab Report Example It is as well known to be a vector quantity and its direction is same as the velocity. There is no special name for momentum unit but commonly letter p is used to represent the momentum vector. Momentum conservation can be derived using Newton’s third law. There is conservation of momentum in cases where there is interaction of interacting objects with each other. For instance, if p1is the systems initial momentum before collision and pf is the final systems momentum after collision, then we have: Energy conservation is considered to be another important conservation law. Energy is not a vector but a scalar. Whereby a scalar has no direction but it has magnitude only. There is conservation of energy based on whether the forces between are conservative. Gravity magnetic forces and electric are example of conservative forces. Other forces at nuclear physics level are also conservative. Friction is considered to be the most critical non-conservative force and it was been considered in this experiment. It is non-conservative force because there is energy conversion to heat. Two bodies sticking together after collision is also considered to be another non-conservative force. This is a special friction case since the energy is converted to heat in the process The experiment dealt with collisions only in one dimension. The bodies’ motion was constrained by a horizontal track. This implied that momentum and velocity was only in one direction(x or -x).Where x represents the tracks co-ordinates. Because we dealt with 2 bodies, the momentum conservation law can be illustrated as. Hence, the masses of the 2 bodies as well as their vectors velocity after and before collision is supposed to be known is order to show momentum conservation. It is mandatory to evaluate the energy after and before collision in order to find out if the energy conserved. The gravitational potential energy is not changed in this case