Question

In a perfectly inelastic collision, while doing bullet/ pendulum experiment through simulation, there were some sources of error( experimental factors)that may affect, the value of final velocity and final kinetic energy. what are those factors? and what would be the souces of error if we perform a physical experiment rather than a simulation? and how it would affect our final velocity. compare results in the simulation and physical experiment

Answer 1

Q. In a perfectly inelastic collision, while doing bullet/ pendulum experiment through simulation, there were some sources of error( experimental factors)that may affect, the value of final velocity and final
kinetic energy. what are those factors? and what would be the souces of error if we perform a physical experiment rather than a simulation? and how it would affect our final velocity. compare results in
the simulation and physical experiment

Ans. While doing experiment via simulation, there are few sources of error. These include the faluire to include the physicality of the pendulum into simulations and treating it as a point mass
(even thowgh all pendulums are real pendulums, i.e. extended masses).
Hence, by ignoring the mass of the string, wind friction for the travelling bullet and local variations in the gravitaitnoal field, we do the simulation, and these missing factors hence contribute to the final error in the simulation, however small that may be

Now, if we do a practical experiment, the errors induced are on part of measurement errors. Since measuring instruments always have a least count and there are always limitations to how accurately
one can measure physical quantities, the final result of a physical experiment has errors on part of measurement errors and human errors