Homework Help

[sumi1]

Originally Posted by Jalen

I don't know.

The initial velocity was .505m/s, and the final was .301m/s

Those are the velocities of the incident cart of 1030.0g making a sticky collision with a target cart of 526.2g

I don't understand how to find the "factor" by which it changed.

hmm, you said that two carts are of equal masses. since one cart was stationary before the collision, the initial momentum of the system is M V. after the collision, two carts stick together, so mass is now 2M. applying momentum conservation, final velocity of the combined body should be V/2.

[user472884]

Originally Posted by sumi1

hmm, you said that two carts are of equal masses. since one cart was stationary before the collision, the initial momentum of the system is M V. after the collision, two carts stick together, so mass is now 2M. applying momentum conservation, final velocity of the combined body should be V/2.

I'm omitting the trial with the equal masses.... I did it about 20 times and I could not get an error lower than 30%

The trials with unequal masses have much lower errors, so I'm just going to focus on them