The Office Chair and Conservation of Momentum

On this grand ole two day sojourn from school due to the snow, said snow was quite heavy and wet so when I finished shoveling I had no desire to create a blog post. On Thursday, I collected a few robotics team members and had them sit in some of Mr. Irwin's office chairs. I had one of them, Nate, place his feet on the back of Jacob's chair and while both are stationary, he would push off from Jacob's chair giving them an initial velocity in opposite direction. With the two students in office chairs and a meter stick on the desk, I called out to them to push off which propelled both chairs away from each other, transferring Nate's initial energy into momentum for both of them before they slow to a stop.

After inserting the video into Logger Pro, I then analyzed the two office chairs and the velocities of Nate's chair and Jacob's chair throughout the collision. The graphs below is the data from this analysis. The values for the velocity are not actually negative but the result of the motion of the the two chairs in the video.

Graph of Nate's Chair

Graph of Jacob's Chair

Using the values obtained by analyzing the graph and by collecting data on the weights of the two chairs with the people in them, I was able to use these values in solving the equations of momentum and energy in determining what type of collision was depicted in the picture. After doing the math, its is clear that the collision was inelastic as momentum was not conserved.

During the inelastic collision, a total of approximately 17.47 Joules of energy was lost after the collision.This loss could be attributed to many different factors including mistakes made during analysis and filming of this blog post, but the biggest influences were outside any issues. The rollers on the office chairs still had friction with the floor causing them to slow down over time. In addition, the uneven floor of Mr. Irwin's room may have had a negative effect. The movement of the roller chair's also may have been affected by Jacob dragging his feet on the ground briefly during the video, which was not discovered until analyzing the data. Aside from these major factors, there were many other outside effects and data inaccuracies that caused the collision to be inelastic losing energy and momentum instead of conserving the momentum.

Comments

The Physics of Spiderman

Over this past weekend after I finished working on my homework, I decided to relax and watch a few movies before going asleep. Among the movies I watched was Spider-Man 3 from 2007 and despite the movie flaws I was interested by the scenes that showed Spider Man shooting through the sky with the use of his webs that come out of his wrists. Due to this, I decided to make my blog post about the physics of Spider-Man's slingshot. After doing some research, I discovered just how much information there is on the physics of Spider-Man and how elements of Spider-Man can be used as examples for most topics learned in mechanics. For this investigation, I will not be using the horrible cliche and terrible CGI infested mess that Spider-Man 3 is but instead the all around superior Spider-Man movie of Spider-Man 2 to investigate the physics of Spider-Man's web propelled slingshot. I want to talk about what happens in terms of physics when Spider-Man launches himself across a dista...

Physics of Sound Dampeners and Active Noise Cancellation

Physics of Sound Dampeners and Active Noise Cancellation Sound dampening foam panels in a recording studio. ANC headphones worn by pilots and/or passengers in consumer aviation aircraft. Acoustic treatment of soundscapes has grown alongside the sound production industry. Whether through absorption panels, diffusors and cloud panels to treat a space or headphones placed directly over the ears of listeners, acoustic treatment comes in many forms. Environments are treated acoustically to absorb excess sound to prevent sound levels from crossing a threshold above which the desired goal cannot be had. Before getting into sound dampening, we must discuss sound. Sound is produced when an object vibrates (a form of oscillation) and temporarily displaces nearby air molecules causing a wave effect as the displaced molecules collide with their neighboring molecules. Sound waves are fluctuations in pressure as the initial displacement of molecules experiences collisions that in ...

Physics of Black Holes...Or Lack Thereof

Isabella Jacavone To comprehend how the universe works, we must dwell into the most basic building blocks of existence; matter, energy, space, and time. NASA's Physics of the Cosmos program involves cosmology, astrophysics, and fundamental physics intended to answer questions about the elusiveness of complex concepts such as black holes, neutron stars, dark energy, and gravitational waves. In this blog post, I'd like to elaborate on a subject that is very intriguing to me; Black holes. And more specifically, what would happen if we got near one. A black hole is anything but a hole, but rather an immense amount of matter compacted into an extremely small area. A black hole is caused when, hypothetically, a star four times more massive than our sun collapses into a sphere no bigger than 600 square km. To put that in perspective, that's about the size of New York City. B lack holes were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which showed that when a...

LSA E Mech 2017-18

Search This Blog