Grossmont College Ballistic Pendulum Lab Report

Video: Conservation of Momentum (and Energy), aka, Ballistic Pendulum (Links to an external site.)

For the “in-person” lab, you would launch a ball horizontally 10 times, and use that information to determine the launch speed and error of the ball. Then you would launch the ball into the ball catcher with a trailing string, and use the trailing string to find the maximum height of the pendulum.  Using that information, you would also determine the launch speed and error of the ball.  Ideally, both results and their errors would overlap, or at the very least be very close in value if they didn’t overlap.