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Snow Day

SNOW DAY BLOG

In this blog, the process of conservation of momentum can be displayed by the rolling of one snowball into another snowball of the same mass.
Each of the snowballs have the same mass of 0.225kg. When one was rolled at the other, the system can be described with the conservation of momentum equation.
 m1v1i+m2v2i=m1v1f+m2v2f
(.225)(3)+(.225)(1.2)=(.225)(0)+(.225)(.589)
These values for velocity could be found by using logger pro to pinpoint the movement and then finding the velocity in the x direction. 

The first graph shows the movement of the first snowball and the second shows the movement of the snowball hit by the first. 
In the end, there is some sort of error which does not allow me to show the conservation of momentum. There are a number of factors that could have caused this error. The points could not have been graphed 100% accurately on logger. Another problem could have been the snowballs themselves. The masses could have been slightly off and both snowballs were not perfectly spherical which resulted in slower velocities than expected. However, I can estimate the amount of kinetic energy lost in this situation by subtracting the final velocity from the initial. 
1/2(.225)(.589)^2 - 1/2(.225)(3)^2 = .039 - 1.0125 = -0.9735 Joules of kinetic energy lost in this collision. 

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