ReMIS-CL: Discovery Learning Environment for Elastic Collisions

• At the bottom there is an animated simulation of the collision that the user runs at will.
• In the two areas above there are two interactive LEDs:
  • One-dimensional property diagram (1DP diagram)
  • Velocity-velocity graph (V-V graph).
• Both LEDs encode the laws of momentum conservation and energy conservation simultaneously.
• The lines in the diagrams represent magnitudes of velocities and masses:
  • U1 and U2 are the velocities before impact of bodies 1 and 2,
  • V1 and V2 are the velocities after,
  • m1 and m2 are their masses.
• Here the bodies approach and depart in different directions but with equal speeds.

 

The LEDs can be directly manipulated in ReMIS-CL to change the values of the variables.
The screen snap shot below shows the effect of:

• Increasing the speeds of U1 and U2.
• Making m2 about twice the size of m1.
• The rest of the 1DP diagram has been automatically updated.
• The V-V graph is also updated automatically.
• The animation begins off the screen to the left.