Why did our conservation of momentum experiment have unexpected results?

AI Thread Summary
The discussion revolves around an experiment on conservation of momentum involving marbles rolling down a ramp and colliding. While the results were consistent in four out of five trials, one trial showed an unexpected increase in momentum, raising questions about the validity of the conservation principle. Participants speculated on possible human errors or miscalculations, suggesting that variations in marble weights could also affect outcomes. Despite thorough checks for friction and initial momentum vectors, the anomaly remained unexplained. The conversation highlights the complexities of experimental physics and the importance of accurate measurements.
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I was doing a lab one day in school and me and my teacher noticed something this isn't homework. We were wondering about conservation of momentum in the lab. The way it was done was we attached a small little ramp on the table. On the ramp we put a marble and let it slide down the ramp and onto the floor. We recorded this distance quite accuratly. Now then we put a second marble at the bottom of the ramp and so we let it hit the marble at an angle so that they would fly off in vectors and have both x and y components. Now we did this about 5 times. Out of the 5 times it worked out the way it should have the two vectors were added together and we got the same amount of momentum give or take a slight bit due to friction and air resistance. Now the 1 out of the 5 time that we did it we noticed that the momentum actually increased. Obviously we found this to be weird and it was to much for it to be human error. We did it agian same procedure same results 4 out of 5 worked but that one did the same thing. Now my question is its almost as if momentum was created somehow but that doesn't go wiht the rule of conservation of momentum. Now how could this happen. (and yes we checked the friction and the original momentum vector to make sure nothing happened and all that jazz.)
 
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If what you say is true...very interesting. But chances are you made a miscalculation somewhere, but i could be wrong...who knows? i don't. i wasn't there. Sorry can't help you here.
 
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... possibly different weights and you didn't know?

Large errors are usually almost exclusively the realm of human errors too :P
 

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