Collisions Lab

In this week's lab, we studied the difference between energy lost in an Elastic Collison vs. an Inelastic Collison. To do so, we set up two carts so that their spring launches were facing one another, so ensure that they would bounce off each other for an elastic collision.  Our carts weighed .25 kg. We measured the speed of the red cart to be .472 m/s and the blue cart to be 0 m/s before the collison. After the collision, the red cart had a velocity of .323 m/s and the blue cart to be .243 m/s. Then, we set up the carts so that their velcro sides were facing one another so that they would stick together, for an inelastic collision. We recorded the red cart to have a speed of .667 m/s and the blue cart of 0 m/s before the collision.
After the collision, the red cart had a velocity of
.031m/s and the blue cart of .431 m/s. A table with
our data is shown below:

After our experiment, we calculated the amount of energy for the elastic and inelastic collisions by finding the percent difference, which is the total energy before x the total energy after / the average of total energy before and after x 100.  We calculated the percent difference of energy in the elastic collision to be 19.608 %. The momentum in the elastic collison was 1.709 %. For the inelastic collision, the energy had a percent difference of 94.737 %, and the momentum of 16.181 %. For both types of collisions, momentum had a lower percent difference, so momentum is more conserved and momentum can help us analyze collisions.

Real World Connection: 

Above is an image of a collision in real life and this article desribes the relationship of energy and momentum that causes it. http://toppers-club.com/iit-physics/be-careful-in-applying-law-of-conservation-of-energy/