Question

The Ballistic Pendulum

1 Was the collision between the ball and the pendulum elastic or inelastic? Confirm your

conclusion using data from the lab. (show all calculations!)

2 Was kinetic energy conserved during the collision? How do you know? (show

calculations!) If kinetic energy was not conserved, where was the energy lost to?

3 Suppose the ball did not stick to the pendulum but rather bounced back toward the

launcher. In other words, suppose the blockat the end of the pendulum was a solid block

and the ball didn’t “stick” to it. Assuming all the masses were the same as they are now,

would the pendulum rise higher, lower or would there be no difference? Explain how you

know with some calculations.

Answer 1

As I can see the this lab is based on ballistic pendulum. The possible answers are

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1) In ballistic pendulum, the collision is inelastic. You can confirm this by calculating the initial and kinetic energies. If energies are not same ( which they will not be) , then the collision is inelastic.

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2) In usual cases, kinetic energy in ballistic pendulum is not conserved because energy is lost when ball sticks to the block and this energy is converted to noise, usually.

The final kinetic energy will be less than the initial kinetic energy

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3) If the ball did not stick to the block, this becomes a case of elastic collision and here energy should be conserved, therefore, the pendulum will rise higher because it had more kinetic energy after the collision and will convert that whole kinetic energy to potential energy.