David Gronlund edited Procedure.tex  over 9 years ago

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\section{Procedure}  This experiment is conducted with the Liberty Hanging Collider, or LHC for short, using two hanging balls of different mass. First establish a starting location for each ball (you might have to experiment so that they actually hit each other) and mark where it is on the graph paper. After releasing them from these locations at the same time, the balls should then collide with each other. As the balls begin to separate after colliding with each other, watch them and when it appears that they have stopped at the top of their arc, grab each and hold them exactly where they are. Put some more placeholders on the graph paper below the where the balls stopped. Then draw arrows from where the balls started to their rest positions and from the their rest positions to their stopped positions. You know that each part of the ball's travel, i.e. from the start to bottom, took approximately 0.456s. $0.456\units s$.  You also know the distance that the ball's traveled because of the arcs you drew. Calculate the length of each arrow and then divide it by .456s $.456\units s$  to get the average velocity of each ball. Then multiply that by the ball's mass to get its average momentum. The combined momentum of both balls before they collide should then equal the combined momentum of both balls after they collide. For example, the equations for a distance vector of \langle $\langle  5, 16\rangle 16\rangle$  would be: %\begin{equation}  % \vec p\sub{f} = \vec p\sub{i} + \vec F\sub{net} \Delta t