The Law Of Conservation Of Momentum

951 Words2 Pages

To investigate the Law of Conservation of Momentum
Research
4. Review Of Literature
Sir Isaac Newton was a 17th Century Physicist and Mathematician. Newton developed the principles of modern physics and in 1687 he published his most acclaimed work, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. This contained his famous laws of Motion.

First law: When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force.
Second law: F = ma. The vector sum of the forces F on an object is equal to the mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration vector a, of the object.
Third law: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.
The law of conservation of momentum is an application of Newton’s second and third laws.
The law of conservation of momentum states:
For a collision occurring between object 1 and object 2 in an isolated system, the total momentum of the two objects before the collision is equal to the total momentum of the two objects after the collision. That is, the momentum lost by object 1 is equal to the momentum gained by object 2.
Trough the years there has been numerous practical experiments to demonstrate the law of conservation of momentum and the one that is probably best known is Newton’s Cradle.

From the literature researched and the equipment available it was decided to perform the experiment using marbles on a flat surface.

Based on my research it was found that the majority of sources had stayed true to the origin of the theory and is very reliable as there is correlation between them.

5. Hypothe...

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... have been better than wood because of the different coefficient of friction.
However as the aim was to prove the conservation of momentum and it was done for all 4 marbles under the same conditions these played a minor role in the outcome of the experiment.
8. Conclusion
Based on the original hypothesis we can deduct that the hypothesis has been proven.
The same result was achieved within allowable variance for all four the marbles used in the experiment.
The magnitude of variation as a deviation of momentum was well within the expected results for all 4 the samples.
The variation can be ascribed to external factors like the timing of the distance travelled between the measured points.
9. Reference List
• http://www.biography.com/people/Isaac-newton
• www.physicsclassroom.com/.../momentum/u4l2b.
• www.britannica.com/.../conservation-of-mome
• h2physics.org/?cat=6

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