Tips for Teachers Collision Lab

The Collision Lab simulation allows students to investigate collisions in 1D and 2D. Experiment with the
number of objects and initial conditions. Vary the elasticity to explore inelastic collisions.

Intro Screen
Set up 1D collisions between two bodies and control the initial conditions. Observe the change in
momentum and kinetic energy.

DRAG objects to OBSERVE

desired position. change in
momentum
DRAG tip of (impulse)
velocity vector to
set velocity (when
paused) DISPLAY speed
and momentum
magnitudes
CHANGE the
mass of the balls.
Clicking data eld
will open a
keypad.

Explore 1D Screen
Experiment with up to four objects in 1D. Enable a Re ecting Border to keep balls contained within the
observation window

ENABLE
Re ecting Border VIEW center of
to constrain balls mass
to observation
window
COMPARE balls
MEASURE the with same
elapsed time diameter

VIEW more data;

CLICK data eld ANALYZE
to edit with momentum in the
keypad system; ZOOM
to rescale vectors
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 Explore 2D Screen
Create collisions in 2D with up to four objects.

DISPLAY the EXPERIMENT

total kinetic with up to 4 balls
energy in the
system
CONTROL
elasticity of
collisions

REPEAT an
experiment

Inelastic Screen
Explore completely inelastic collisions between two objects. The “Slip” mode behaves like inelastic
collisions on previous screens and affects the magnitude of the component of the velocity along the “line
of action”. When in “Stick” mode, the balls will stick together, resulting in rotation.

VIEW ball paths

SET mode of
inelastic collision
(see Model
Simpli cations
below)
EXPERIMENT
with preset
con gurations or
create your own

Insights into Student Use

• Frequent changes to the parameters while the balls are in motion can lead to hard-to-interpret
behavior. When setting up an experiment, it may be helpful to rst pause the simulation. The step
forward and step back buttons can be used to incrementally analyze when paused.

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 • Turning off Re ecting Borders enables students to focus on ball-ball collisions which conserve
Momentum. The ball-wall collisions do not conserve momentum.

Complex Controls
• Mass, position, and velocity can be edited by clicking on the
text box and entering a value with the on-screen keypad.
• The blue reset button below the observation window can be used to repeat an experiment. It
will restore the most recently saved con guration. A new con guration is saved each time
there is a change to the number of balls, position, mass, velocity, elasticity, or constant size.
However, if any balls have escaped off-screen, no new states will be saved. This allows lost
balls to be recovered.

Customization Options
Query parameters allow for customization of the simulation, and can added by appending a '?' to the
sim URL, and separating each query parameter with a ‘&’. The general URL pattern is:
…html?queryParameter1&queryParameter2&queryParameter3

In Collision Lab, if you only want to include the 2nd and 3rd screens (screens=2,3), with the 2nd
screen open by default (initialScreen=2) use:
https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/collision-lab/latest/collision-lab_all.html?screens=2,3&initialScreen=2

To run this in Spanish (locale=es), the URL would become:

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/collision-lab/latest/collision-lab_all.html?locale=es&screens=2,3&initialScreen=2

Query Parameter and Description Example Links

screens - speci es which screens are included in screens=1
the sim and their order. Each screen should be screens=2,1
separated by a comma. For more information, visit
the Help Center.
initialScreen - opens the sim directly to the initialScreen=1
speci ed screen, bypassing the home screen. initialScreen=3

locale - specify the language of the simulation locale=es (Spanish)

using ISO 639-1 codes. Available locales can be locale=fr (French)
found on the simulation page on the Translations
tab. Note: this only works if the simulation URL
ends in “_all.html”.
allowLinks - when false, disables links that allowLinks=false
take students to an external URL. Default is true.
supportsPanAndZoom - when false, disables supportsPanAndZoom=false
panning and zooming using pinch-to-zoom or
browser zoom controls. Default is true.

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 Model Simpli cations
• Technical details of the underlying model can be found here.
• The balls are generally non-rotating, with the exception of the “Stick” mode on the Inelastic screen.
• Elasticity affects the ball-wall and ball-ball collisions.
• The stroke weight around the balls represents elasticity. The lower the elasticity, the thicker the stroke.
This can be thought of as a rubbery, deformable layer being added to the balls.
• Elasticity, represented as a percentage, indicates the amount of kinetic energy lost during collisions. If
the elasticity = 100%, the collision is perfectly elastic and kinetic energy is conserved. Elasticity <
100% affects the magnitude of the component of the velocity along the “line of action” between two
colliding balls. The line of action is the line connecting the centers of the balls at the moment of
collision. If the elasticity is 30%, then the speed along the line of action after collision is 30% of the
value it would have had in an elastic collision. The speed perpendicular to the line of action is not
affected. Since these balls are non-rotating, changing the speed perpendicular to the line of action
would violate Conservation of Angular Momentum.
• The Inelastic screen supports two types of inelastic collisions, referred to as “Slip” and “Stick”. When in
“Slip” mode, inelastic collisions behave as described above. When in “Stick” mode, the balls will stick
together, resulting in rotation.
• Stepping back only allowed in perfectly elastic collisions, so it is disabled if the elasticity is less than
100%. This is to avoid displaying alternate histories that arise from numerical imprecisions.
• Due to precision limitations, it is possible for values such as velocity, kinetic energy, or momentum to
appear to be zero, even when they are not. We have chosen to display these values as “~0.00” to
indicate that the values are approximately, but not exactly, zero.
• Balls can be moved by dragging them to the desired position. If the sim is in motion, it will temporarily
pause the sim. If a ball is released so that it overlaps a wall or another ball, it will automatically
reposition itself to avoid overlap.
• When Constant Size is enabled, all balls will have the same diameter. The color saturation of the ball
maps to its density (i.e. larger masses will have a more saturated color).
• If the diameter of the balls change after an inelastic collision in “Stick” mode (either by checking or
unchecking Constant Size), the balls will separate.
• If an object is partially out-of-bounds when the Re ecting Border is turned on, it will continue to
escape.
• The Momenta Diagram is a graphical display of the momentum vectors arranged tip-to-tail. However,
in one dimension, the vectors are vertically offset, so that the students can see the vectors more easily.

Suggestions for Use

Sample Challenge Prompts
• Draw "before-and-after" pictures of collisions.
• Construct momentum vector representations of "before-and-after" collisions.
• Explain why kinetic energy is not conserved and varies in some collisions.
• Determine the change in mechanical energy in collisions of varying elasticity.
• De ne elasticity.

See all published activities for Collision Lab here.

For more tips on using PhET sims with your students, see Tips for Using PhET.

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