23 May 2011
May 23 2011
Ballistic Pendulum
Posted in Physics ExperimentsComments Off
The ballistic pendulum is a classic example of a dissipative collision in which conservation of momentum can be used for analysis, but conservation of energy during the collision cannot be invoked because the energy goes into inaccessible forms such as internal energy. After the collision, conservation of energy can be used in the swing of the combined masses upward, since the gravitational potential energy is conservative.
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