Commenting
Throughout this project, I’ll be commenting on my peers’ project in addition to working on my own. I’ll be working with Aidan and Mekhael on their project analyzing Newton’s Cradle. Instead of trying to rephrase their ideas, I’ve included their outline of the project below.
I think their ideas are interesting, especially their mention of energy losses. Energy losses are a key part of the physics behind Newton’s cradle that aren’t typically considered when talking about the physics behind it — rather, they’re usually shoved aside and minimized to focus on a more idealized demonstration of conservation of momentum. Since we do live in quite a non-ideal world, focusing on the non-ideal aspects of Newton’s cradle could definitely be quite interesting.
I do have quite a few concerns about the practicality of this, though, since Newton’s cradle is specifically designed to minimize energy losses — this means that the losses that do exist will be quite small, and therefore quite hard to measure.
As I commented on their ideas, I believe most of their energy losses would take the form of heat and sound. The energy lost as sound could potentially be measured — perhaps they could measure the volume of the cradle in motion and use the equations for sound energy to determine how much energy is lost as the bearings strike each other. Measuring heat would likely be much tricker, and I’m not fully sure how they would do this — but hopefully they’ll find a way.
Some of their other questions seemed to be answerable through simple observations, and their answers could in fact even be predicted without building a Newton’s cradle. I think it would be pretty interesting if they combined experiments and theory by attempting to predict the exact behaviour of Newton’s cradle, based on observations of energy losses. For example, they could predict how long it would take for the energy in the system to dissipate given a certain starting configuration.
Since Newton’s cradle is about conservation of momentum, I think it would be neat if they also touched on the impacts of conservation of momentum in society. Perhaps they could touch on rocketry and the rocket equation, or on planes and air travel. Similarly, they could also touch on conservation of energy, and relate it to the environment by talking about power generation, and the similarities and differences between Newton’s cradle and methods of power generation.
I think their ideas are interesting, especially their mention of energy losses. Energy losses are a key part of the physics behind Newton’s cradle that aren’t typically considered when talking about the physics behind it — rather, they’re usually shoved aside and minimized to focus on a more idealized demonstration of conservation of momentum. Since we do live in quite a non-ideal world, focusing on the non-ideal aspects of Newton’s cradle could definitely be quite interesting.
I do have quite a few concerns about the practicality of this, though, since Newton’s cradle is specifically designed to minimize energy losses — this means that the losses that do exist will be quite small, and therefore quite hard to measure.
As I commented on their ideas, I believe most of their energy losses would take the form of heat and sound. The energy lost as sound could potentially be measured — perhaps they could measure the volume of the cradle in motion and use the equations for sound energy to determine how much energy is lost as the bearings strike each other. Measuring heat would likely be much tricker, and I’m not fully sure how they would do this — but hopefully they’ll find a way.
Some of their other questions seemed to be answerable through simple observations, and their answers could in fact even be predicted without building a Newton’s cradle. I think it would be pretty interesting if they combined experiments and theory by attempting to predict the exact behaviour of Newton’s cradle, based on observations of energy losses. For example, they could predict how long it would take for the energy in the system to dissipate given a certain starting configuration.
Since Newton’s cradle is about conservation of momentum, I think it would be neat if they also touched on the impacts of conservation of momentum in society. Perhaps they could touch on rocketry and the rocket equation, or on planes and air travel. Similarly, they could also touch on conservation of energy, and relate it to the environment by talking about power generation, and the similarities and differences between Newton’s cradle and methods of power generation.