What quantity did you change?
Labs / Physics
Collisions
Balls carom around a box, bouncing off the walls and off each other. Drag a ball and let go to fling it, or click empty space to drop in another. The readouts track the total momentum & kinetic energy of the whole system as the crashes pile up.
Collisions
Balls carom around a box, bouncing off the walls and off each other. Drag a ball and let go to fling it, or click empty space to drop in another. The readouts track the total momentum & kinetic energy of the whole system as the crashes pile up.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Physics explains how changes in forces, energy, motion, and matter produce results we can measure. This model lets you test one part of that relationship at a time.
Explore
Try the model
balls 6p 0.0 kg·m/sKE 0.0 J
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Set restitution to 1.00 and watch the kinetic energy. Why does it barely change between wall bounces?
- Now slide restitution down toward 0. Where does all that kinetic energy go — and why does momentum keep marching on?
- Send a heavy ball into a light one. Can a small ball ever knock a big one backwards?
- Crank the mass ratio to 8×. How does a fast small ball behave when it slams into a nearly immovable giant?
- Fling one ball straight at another sitting still. After a head-on elastic hit of equal masses, what happens to the ball you threw?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Name the quantity you changed, the quantity that responded, and the physical rule connecting them. Use a readout or visible change as evidence.
Check
Before you leave
What measurable result changed?
Which physical idea connects them?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.