Tennis Collision

To illustrate the law of conservation of momentum, I took pictures of a collision between two tennis balls. Conservation of momentum states that in an isolated system, the total momentum is conserved.

During the collision of the tennis balls, momentum transfers from one ball to another. The combined momentum of both balls is constant meaning that the loss in momentum of one is equal to the gain in momentum of the other balll.

Coliusion of the tennis balls is also an example of elastic collision because the kinetic energy before and after the collision is equal to each other.

Momentum is conserved in both inelastic and elastic collisions. Momentum is equal to mass times velocity. Therefore, in the case of the tennis balls, the addition of momentums initially of the balls must equal to their addition of momentums after the collision.

Dizzy Spinning

I was busy this whole weekend with helping out at the Penny Carnival my church held on Halloween night and attending a Spoonful of Sugar meeting on Saturday at school that I didn't get the chance to take pictures involving physics.

For this physic's journal, I'm going to use a picture that my sister took while she went to Singapore. In the picture, she is by a spinning top. As the top is spinning, it is undergoing physics.

The top rotates along a principal axis. Spinning around the rotation axis gives the top an angular momentum and this angular momentum will remain constant unless torque is added to the top. The process in which the top's end rotates along the vertical axis is called precession. The top precesses in the direction of the torque exerted by its weight. As the top slows down, its precession increases. The top then begins to wobble and then falls down. Gravitational torque produces precession. Torque is a vector quantity and its direction is in the change in angular velocity.

Hopefully, I will have more physic related pictures by next week. Other than that, after searching up the physics of a spinning top, I learned some new physics terms which I know we will come across in the future.