Multiple collisions of two steel balls in a Newton's cradle

摘要

Multiple collisions of two steel balls in a Newton's cradle were filmed in order to measure the coefficient of restitution of the balls. Two different initial conditions were examined, one where the balls approached each other at about the same speed, and one where one ball was initially at rest. In theory, the fractional energy loss per collision is different in each case, but the experimental results indicated that the overall energy loss was about the same in both cases.