During a experiment in class with two air track gliders, cart 1 (0.5102 g) and c

Question

During a experiment in class with two air track gliders, cart 1 (0.5102 g) and cart 2 (0.4944 g), cart 1 is moving and cart to is moving opposite so that they near the center of the track. Before the collision cart 1 had a momentum of 0.102 kg*m/s and cart 2= -0.109 kg*m/s. After the collision the momentum for cart 1 was -0.0306 kg*m/s and cart 2 was 0.00989kg*m/s. From this the sum of the momentum prior to collision was -0.007kg* m/s and the system momentum post collision was -0.0207. The question is where did the momentum go or was there any to go anywhere?

Explanation / Answer

The cart with larger momentum stays there and cart with less momentum bounce back and moves back after the collision , hence the remaining momentum tranfers to the cart with less momentum i.e so cart-1 have -0.007kg*m/s momentum before collision and cart-2 have -0.0207 kg*m/s momentum after the collision.. it is a inelastic collision so sum of the momentum before the collision and after the collsion is different.

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