Students in 1st year Physics worked in teams to collect data to determine how the change in momentum for two carts compared in a specific collision. Each group had parameters that made their collision different from others (colliding with or without magnets to make the collision ‘elastic’ or not, varying masses of carts, both cars moving initially or one car stationary, collide and stick or collide and separate, etc…). At students analyzed their own data, they filled out a row in a Google Sheet to share their results. The last column uses conditional formatting to color-code their results (less than 10% percent difference = green, more than 40% difference = red, with color gradient in between). After most students had input their results, we used this spreadsheet to look for patterns.
The main trends: the change in momentum for the two objects generally should have opposite signs, the percent difference between these two changes is generally pretty small, leading to the idea that the changes in momentum for the two objects are equal, but with opposite signs (and further leading to the conservation of momentum).
Randall Physics 