Preview - Investigating Momentum Using Netlogo

Investigation

The slider control as well as the before and after situation of a perfectly inelastic collision involving equally massed cars is shown below comparing different initial speeds of Car0 versus Car1. This setting puts Car0's velocity at 30 and Car1's velocity at 40.

Questions

Please answer the questions below.

Perform this collision with the masses and initial velocities as shown in the table below. Fill in the remaining cells in order to quantify this situation where each car is its own system. Keep the COE slider at 0%. Set the speed and time sliders of the collision as below:

     

Set the following masses and velocities for testing.

How did an increase in speed affect the impulse on the cars during the collision?

How did an increase in speed affect the g’s of acceleration the cars experienced during the collision?

Perform this collision with the masses and initial velocities as shown in the table below. Fill in the remaining cells in order to quantify this situation where each car is its own system. Set the  %elasticity and time sliders of the collision as below:

Set the following masses and velocities for testing.

How did an increase in %elasticity affect the impulse on the cars during the collision?

How did an increase in %elasticity affect the g’s of acceleration the cars experienced during the collision?

Perform this collision with the masses and initial velocities as shown in the table below. Fill in the remaining cells in order to quantify this situation where each car is its own system. Keep the COE slider at 0%. Set the mass and time sliders of the collision as below:

 .    

Set the following masses and velocities for testing.

How did an increase in mass affect the impulse on the cars during the collision?

How did an increase in mass affect the g’s of acceleration the cars experienced during the collision?

Using what you found out from the collisions above create scenarios that maximize the impulse on at least one car. Alter mass, mass increment, speed, speed increment, %elasticity, %elasticity increment, and time of collision in order to do so:

Maximum Impulse on at least one car should be at least 1080 N*s.

Using what you found out from the collisions above create scenarios that maximize the g’s of acceleration experienced by at least one car. Alter mass, mass increment, speed, speed increment, %elasticity, %elasticity increment, and time of collision in order to do so:

Maximum g’s of Acc of at least one car should be at least 137.76 g's. That is a lot of g's!

Using your setup from Question 2.11, alter only the time to its maximum value. How much did increasing the time of impact affect the g's of acceleration? What does this say about the importance of an airbag in modern cars?

Notes

These notes will appear on every page in this lesson so feel free to put anything here you'd like to keep track of.