Recent content by Daniel Wilson

Thanks, I came across those articles independently also. I guess they answer my question as to whether I can write a solution at A-Level standard and it seems as though the answer to that may be "no", but it'll be an interesting enquiry for myself.

Looks great. I’ll take a look. Thank you.

That is an interesting proposition! I’ll try the sequence of collisions first. Thanks

I like the sound of that - trying the sequence of collisions. I’ll give it a go. I did look for Newton’s cradle specifically (on DuckDuckGo not Google ; ) and came across a question like mine in Physics Stack Exchange. One answer says that 2 balls incoming is the maximum number that can be...

Ideally I would like to arrive at a solution that doesn't assume how many masses are involved in a collision so that it can be generalised. For example the method of separating out balls won't work for two balls incoming since in a 2m collision with stationary m the 2m ball needs to keep moving...

Yeah that is a good way to tackle this. Would you say it is the only way to solve this at the simple level of conservation of momentum and KE?

My apologies! I've converted it to a PDF and attached.

QUESTION Ball A is moving with velocity of v, it collides elastically with five stationary balls. All six balls are of equal mass. What happens next? SOLUTION I want to find out how many balls move off from those that were stationary and with what velocity they move away. I apply the elastic...

I've been digging into thermodynmics in preparation for teaching a new course. I came across this thread in my quest. I'd like to try and round things off with what I hope is a correct procedure (I know this is far too late for the OP but hopefully it'll help out anyone with the same...