Conservation of Momentum and Energy of metal pucks

[3ephemeralwnd]

I recently did an experiment in class that involved two parts,
1) the collision of 2 metal pucks
2) the collision of 2 magnetic pucks

following the analysis, i discovered that in part 1, 75% of the original kinetic energy, and 93% of the original momentum was conserved after the collision, but i part 2, only 68% of the original kinetic energy, and 71% of original momentum was conserved

i tried to think of an explanation as to why the magnetic pucks conserved less momentum and kinetic energy, but i coudln't come up with anything. I think that a magnetic collision should actually conserve MORE momentum and kinetic energy, because no energy is lost to heat and sound during the 'collision' because the two objects don't actually ever touch..

can anyone explain the results of my experiment?

 

[dgOnPhys]

Interesting result, I guess in the second case you can still get electromagnetic field to carry away energy and momentum but I doubt that can account for that much. A more likely contributor could be Eddy currents in conductors, were the puck conductive or moving over a conductive surface?

 

[3ephemeralwnd]

Oh sorry, i forgot to mention that the experiment was conducted on an air table

 

[K^2]

Was air table surface metal or plastic? Magnets moving over metals tend to induce electric currents and experience additional "drag", which can carry away both energy and momentum.

Edit: I should learn to read. Though, the question is still unanswered.

 

[Studiot]

Were the magnetic pucks attractive or repulsive towards each other?

It would add useful information to your experiment if you repeated it with pucks that did the opposite.

Did you observe the action of the magnetic pucks as they approached?
Was there any rotation created?

 

[Jack the Stri]

If they're both magnetic, isn't there an amount of potential energy to consider?