Use conservation of momentum to calculate expected final velocity of cart 1 and cart 2 and compare to simulation results for cart 1 and cart 2 after collision.

Cart 1 will always have an initial velocity of 2.00 m/s and Cart 2 will always begin at rest. Try all the different combinations of masses for both carts, where mass m = 300 grams, for both Elastic and Inelastic collision types.

The simulation takes into account typical energy loss during collisions, so there will always be some discrepancy between the measured and calculated/expected values for the final total momentum of the system. You can determine the energy lost during the collision by comparing the expected and measured velocities. While the theoretical results for final velocities will always produce the same calculate values for everyone, the energy lost changes slightly each time the simulation is run, just as it would in a real physical scenario, and will therefore produce a unique Energy Lost During Collision result for every student.

Adapted from a simulation written by Andrew Duffy. physics.bu.edu/~duffy/HTML5/index.html