Lab 19 Conservation of Energy and Angular Momentum

Lab 19 Conservation of Energy and Angular Momentum

Data Completed: 11/21/2016

Lab Members:
Jarrod Griffin
Christina Vides
Enio Rodriquez

This lab attempts to show a real world example of conservation of angular momentum and conservation of energy, and when to use the two in a real world experiment.

Procedure/Setup:

In this lab we set a pendulum up so that it will strike a ball of clay on the ground. We then used video capture along side Logger Pro to get the height the meter stick and clay combination rose to. In order to calculate an estimated height for the meter stick and clay, we had three main steps that will be listed in calculations.  A picture of this setup is shown below. 

Measured Data:

We found the height that the meter stick and clay had risen to by using Logger Pro and a video of the swinging apparatus. We found its maximum vertical position after swinging through its equilibrium point, and then found that point on the X/Y plane we placed in Logger, along with setting the scale. This will give us a close value for maximum height of the end of the meter stick. 

Maximum height reached by end of meter stick(0.1323m):

Calculated Data:

To calculate our data, we followed a basic three steps. We first found the rotational velocity as it swung through equilibrium and right before it hit the clay, second, we then applied conservation of rotational momentum for during the collision, and lastly applied conservation of energy after the collision. We could not apply conservation of energy to the entire problem as there was energy loss due to the deformation of the clay in the impact. We must also take into account the change in center of mass of the system after collision.

Conclusion:

With a small percent error of about 5%, this lab was a success. Some of the percent error is explained by friction from the pivot, and from the clay scraping along the ground, even though we used a paperclip to eliminate much of that friction. Even more of the error can be explained from the measurements of our data, within Logger Pro, and the measurement of the length of the meter stick from the pivot.