I want you guys to rewrite this lab procedure, and it is fine ifit was shorter than this.
An air track was fitted with two photocell bridges, one on eachside of the collision region. Each bridge was operating in a gatemode timer that allows the collection of time intervals before andafter collision. To ensure that friction and gravity have minimaleffects, the track was leveled. Before starting the experiment, weensured that loss in velocity was no greater than two percent ineither direction. To check this, we sent one glider in onedirection and noted the time to cross each photocell placed onemeter apart. The difference between the two times divided by thetime to cross the first photocell was the fraction of momentum thatwas lost due to friction and gained or lost due to gravity. Thetrack was readjusted accordingly and the check was repeated in theother direction.
The first step in starting the experiment was measuring themasses of the two gliders (i.e. the heavy glider and the lightglider). The masses of the gliders were made “heavy†or “light†byadding trimming weights. Then, a series of four collisions (eachrepeated three times) were conducted
“H†indicates heavy glider, “L†indicates light glider, “Offâ€indicates that the collision was made elastic by facing the bumperstoward one another, and “On†indicates that the collision was madeinelastic by the mounting the “sticky bumpers†on each end (i.e.pin and putty attachments).
Using the memory mode of the photoelectric timers, we were ableto collect times for both instances (before and after collision)that that glider past the photobridges. The first data point wasour first time point and the second data point was the total of thefirst and second time point. Therefore, to get the second time, wehad to subtract the first time point from the second data point.These times were then used to caluculate the velocities andsubsequently the momentum and kinetic energy of both gliders.
