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Snow Day Blog

After being assigned a blog on my snow day, I decided to conduct an experiment in which I demonstrated conservation of momentum between two rolls of coins (nickels and quarters). I began my freezing water in a cookie sheet so that I could create a frictionless surface for me to conduct my experiment on. Then, I took a video of myself pushing the two rolls of coins at one another and the collision that followed.

After a few takes, I thought that I had caused a usable collision, so I went to logger pro. Using video-analysis, I was able to calculate the velocities of both the coins before and after the collision. After doing this I weighed the coins on a kitchen scale and was able to form my conservation of momentum equations. Because I had no way of causing the coins to travel at I constant velocity, I decided to use the velocities of directly before and after the collision for both coins in my equation.

The velocity of the Nickels:
The Velocity of the Quarters

Equation:

0.047 kg=mass of quarters
0.02 kg=mass of nickels

(0.047)(-0.86)+(0.02)(0.621)=(0.047)(-0.576)+(0.02)(0.314)

-0.028=-0.02

We can see how conservation of momentum was put into play here as the two values are almost equal. Of course, they were not going to be exactly equal as there was most likely some friction and the collision was not perfectly elastic. However, the experiment still confirms that conservation of momentum is present. 

Energy Equations: 

Quarters: 
((0.5)(0.047)(0.86^2))-((0.5)(0.047)(0.576^2))= 0.069 J lost 

Nickels
((0.5)(0.02)(0.621^2))-((0.5)(0.02)(0.314^2))= 0.0029 J lost

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