Finally, Newton’s third Law which states that when two bodies interact the forces, they apply on each other are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction is used to make sense of our calculations.

Note: Below is another student abstract, introduction and discussion/conclusion please read and understand each of them and write it in your own words

Abstract:
This report discussed the theory behind conservation of momentum and energy loss in hard and soft collisions. The physics concepts used were conservation of momentum, impulse, and Newton’s third Law. Two pucks were pushed to hit each other and tracked using the tracking camera. The data collected was used to evaluate whether their momentum was conserved or not by calculating the momentum before and after collision in both dimensions. Furthermore, kinetic energy was calculated to determine if collisions were elastic. To conclude, the momentum of both types of collisions were found to conserved and elastic.

Introduction:
The objective of this experiment is to analyze soft and hard collisions between two pucks and verify whether momentum is conserved for each type of collision. Moreover, determine the kinetic energy loss and evaluate the collision force for each puck. The major physics concepts used were conservation of momentum, impulse, and Newton’s Laws. Conservation of momentum is when two bodies act upon each other and their product of mass and velocity is equal before and after collision.1 Impulse is a force experienced by the objects colliding which should be equal to the change in momentum.2 Finally, Newton’s third Law which states that when two bodies interact the forces, they apply on each other are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction is used to make sense of our calculations.

Discussion and Conclusion:
Table 1 displays the velocities of the two pucks before and after collision for the hard collision. The initial velocities of puck 1 in both dimensions have relatively the same magnitude with opposite directions, the same goes with puck 2. This indicates that the two pucks have been pushed initially with almost the same force. However, for the final velocities it can be seen that the values are not similar since it was after collision, the same goes with Table 2. Moreover, Table 6 shows the change in kinetic energy to be -0.0034. The value is negative since there was a loss of energy during collision. This loss could be due to friction and reaction force. In the soft collision the change of kinetic energy is much smaller -0.0006881 (see Table 7) compared to the hard one. This is because the pucks were wrapped with Velcro which minimizes the effect of collision, therefore decreasing the value of change in kinetic energy.

Table 3 and 4 discusses the collision forces in x and y direction. It can be deduced that the values for Fx and Fy are similar in magnitude with opposite directions for all cases. This verifies Newton’s third Law. Moreover, the tables show the time interval ∆

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