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.
balls 6p 0.0 kg·m/sKE 0.0 J
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?