The Virtual Air Track

This applet can be used to simulate a variety of 1D collision scenarios on the airtrack. The buttons are relatively self-explanatory.

Related Notes

  1. You can set up your own starting positions by stopping the simulation and then dragging the cars back to re-position them.
  2. Alpha is a measure of the elasticity of the collision; an alpha value of 1.0 would be perfectly elastic.

Sourced from: Interactive Physics Applet Database (http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/applets)