Re: [Phys-L] ? FCI --> momentum flow

[Bruce Sherwood <Bruce_Sherwood@ncsu.edu>]

At http://www.av8n.com/physics/force-intro.htm I don't see anything about
Newton's cradle. What am I missing?

I've always been uncomfortable with statements to the effect that Newton's
cradle "proves momentum is conserved" or some such. What happens with the
device depends on the stiffness of the metal balls. Here's a computational
model of what happens if you put springs of various stiffnesses between the
balls (you need an appropriate browser and a graphics card with GPUs to see
this):

http://www.glowscript.org/#/user/Bruce_Sherwood/folder/Pub/program/NewtonsCradle

Here's a related article by Rhett Allain, which includes among much else a
movie of my program, in case you can't run programs that use WebGL:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/what-went-wrong-with-the-mythbusters-newton-cradle/

Bruce