This lets you do a variety of experiments with a frictionless "puck table." You can adjust the intial velocity and direction of the pucks, and make a variety of selections including magnetic pucks, a tilted table, inelastic collision (including rotational motion), and viewing of the center of mass.
The spark generator gives you a snapshot of where things are at given time intervals. By looking at the spark tracks you can determine the velocity and acceleration of the pucks under a variety of conditions.
- A few notes:
- A "magnetic" collision is a totally elastic collision. No KE is lost because no energy goes into heat or sound because the two objects never physically touch. This simulation is flawed in that it allows you to select both a magnetic and inellastic collison at the same time. These are mutually exclusive and can not happen at the same time. This representation is wrong if both of those settings are checked.