Activity 17

PRO

Nuclear dodgems
Activity
Use frictionless pucks or hover-footballs to model collisions between subatomic particles. Explore what happens when a moving puck collides with a stationary puck whose mass is the same as, greater than, or less than its own. If possible, record the collisions as multiash photographs.

Pucks can move about (almost) free of friction. air or carbon dioxide.

ey are supported on a thin layer of

Safety note
Strobe lighting can cause ts in people with epilepsy, especially at frequencies between 15 and 20 Hz. People with photoepilepsy should avoid ickering lights. Use gloves to handle dry ice.

You will need to decide how to record the motion of the pucks when they collide, and how to vary the mass of a puck. Here are some things to try. Predict what will happen before you put them into practice. Try pushing one small puck so that it collides with another identical, stationary puck. See what happens when: they collide head-on one gives the other a glancing blow. Try pushing a small puck so that it collides with a larger, stationary puck. Try starting with a large puck at rest, and making a smaller puck collide with it. Try varying the speed of the rst puck. How does this aect the directions in which the pucks move after the collision? And their speeds? You could also see what happens when two moving pucks collide, but this is much harder to interpret. In particle-scattering experiments, physicists are usually looking at moving particles which strike stationary targets.

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