Collisions (Meter Stick with Clay)

Purpose: The purpose of the lab was to analyze an inelastic collision which involved a meter stick striking a piece of clay and how to use conservation of momentum in order to find how high the meter stick rises.

Procedure: The whole lab involved the use of a meter stick, a piece of clay and a stand from which the meter stick was swinging. The meter stick was pinned at one end so that it could swing from a certain height. We also used Video Capture and Logger Pro in order to compare our experimental results from our derived results. First, we used calculations so that we could come to a result and see whether conservation of momentum would apply to the inelastic collision. Then we would raise the meter stick a certain height and use Video Capture to see how high the meter stick swung. Below is an example of how the experiment looked.

Data: In order to get the numbers for our experiment we measured the the length of the ruler (which was already given), the mass of both the ruler and the piece of clay. Below is the graph of the data that we used for our actual value. The y value showed how high the meter stick went but we had to subtract 20 cm because the initial height of the clay was elevated.

Calculations: The calculations used were to solve for how high the meter stick was going to go. In order to solve for it we used conservation of angular momentum which involved finding the moment of inertia of the meter stick at one end and using that to get the final height.

Summary: Overall the lab was successful because the experimental value was not too far from the actual value. The experimental value was 0.238 m and the one from the graph was 0.280 which was -0.420 meters difference. The error might have consisted of friction between the pin and the ruler and some small air resistance. Also the ruler was supposed to be released from the horizontal position so it might not have been exactly released from that position.