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The physics of *sports?* project was based on the idea of calculating the different parts of collisions and trying to understand the transfer of energy. For the most part the groups involved used two object that collided and measured there velocities before and after to compare the momentum of the system. My group decided to do Car on Car collision using a hot wheels track. This was an effective way at reliably colliding two hot wheels together.
We ran into a few issues with our design but overall we got some solid data that pointed to the correct traspher of energy between the two cars during the collision. In reality we should have seen a 100% energy transfer throughout the collision but due to a relationship between vertical and horizontal velocities we almost never got a 100% conversion.
This was our car to car collision setup. It involved to equal parts on each side of the ramps, that went up vertically at the walls. in the center there is a flat section where the cars will be colliding with taped marks that show the camera how fast the car is traveling both before and after the collision.
This setup was very useful in providing data, although during the collisions the cars would occasionally jump upwards, that jump with drastically reduce the reliability and increase the percent error by quite a bit.
Collison 1: Similar masses, During a similar mass collision the momentum before and momentum after the collisions should be generally equal. As we can see in the graph to the right, they are not equal. During the collision we measured and elasticity of 29% with a 14.2% error for the numbers. A combination of those two factors would result in a sub-optimal collision.
Collison 2: In the Big mass vs. Small mass collision, the car with the bigger mass can be expected to loose less of its velocity and energy. We can see in the graph that P2 started with generally the same momentum and ended with more than P1. This is most likely due to the different sizes masses.
36% elastic
.878% Error (< Very low!!)
Collison 3: Two big collisions, this colision should be similar to the two smaller cars, but in the graph you can see a lot of the energy disappeared. The elasticity of this collision is only 15% and in the video car one pops up a little, leading to that small amount of momentum shown in the graph.
7.13% Error
This graph is showing that not all of the energy present in the beginning of the collision is there in the end. This is due to the fact that this collision is not elastic, this is a partially inelastic collision.(or partially elastic, depending if your, glass half full or half empty) If the collision was 100% elastic the kinetic energy before would be the same as the energy after, as all of it was conserved.
Physics Concepts
Physics Concepts
Velocity: How fast something is moving in a certain direction.
Acceleration: How quickly something speeds up, slows down, or changes direction.
Free fall: When something falls only because of gravity, without any other forces pushing or pulling on it.
Forces and Newton’s Laws: Forces are pushes or pulls that make things move. Newton's Laws are rules that explain how these forces work.
Friction: The force that makes it hard for things to slide past each other when they're touching.
Air resistance: The force of air pushing against something that's moving through it, like wind resistance.
Tension: The tightness in something like a rope or string when it's pulled on from both ends.
Momentum: How hard it is to stop something that's moving. It depends on how heavy it is and how fast it's going.
Collision: When things bump into each other, either sticking together or bouncing apart.
Energy: The ability of something to do work or make things change. It comes in different forms like motion, heat, or light.
Springs: Elastic things that can stretch or squash, then bounce back to their original shape. They're often used to store and release energy.
Conclusion
The physics of *Sports?* project was interesting in the sense that all the other groups were studying very different types of collisions. Some were using an air hockey table while others were using hot wheels tracks. The difference in the objects being studied gave the presentation day of the project an interesting viewpoint. I thought that that was a good example of collaboration on a class scale. It was cool to look at the different project ideas and executions during the presentations. In my group though, we all were very good critical thinkers. We were able to come up with a reliable collision circuit that can be used over and over again, and easily fit cars of different masses. We had to figure out a way to suspend the track up without covering any part of the track and keeping the distance to the center the same on both sides of the track. In all honesty we could have probably thought of a way to keep the cars vertically restricted. If the cars colliding would bounce up at all, the data gained from that video would have very low percent return of the total energy. As we only knew how to calculate the horizontal momentums, any sort of vertical component would be disregarded as gone. I think in this project Stan and I could have also communicated with the other two lab partners a little better. I felt at points it would be Stan and I working on something and then Lorena and Olivia working on another independent part. But overall we put out some amazing work that showcased the collision between two hot wheels of varying masses.
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