Finishing Up

Discussion:    The results reveal many interesting points. The initial energy and final energy does not match up. This means that we must have lost energy somewhere during the collision. Thermal energy and sound energy must have been present during the time of the collision. Although the measurements, when compared, came out really close, there was a lot of room for error. Some possible sources of error are the inaccuracy of human measurement, the imperfect alignment of the balls as they dropped, and overall the collision did not take place in an ideal situation. It seems that my results are consistent with theory in a sense that some of the energy after the collision became thermal and sound energy.

Conclusion:    My results show that in this collision about 22% of the energy is lost to thermal and sound energy. I thought that energy was not conserved at the beginning because of the tennis ball shooting out faster than its initial velocity. Now I see that actually energy is lost after the collision to thermal and sound energy. The goals of this project were appropriately met.