A Study of Splashes

Discussion & Conclusion

Our results show that there was a difference in the collision between a quarter and a penny as they are made of different materials. In both collisions the pellet shattered creating a radial deflection, however the collision with the quarter caused a spark, and the collision with the penny did not. The cooled coins behaved largely in the same manner as coins at normal temperatures and did not become brittle enough to crack and did not produce sparks, but merely dented. Therefore temperature changes in the coin, did not have a large effect on the collision. The dents created on the coins were approximately the size and depth of half of a pea. There were several things that we could have done to make our experiment run more smoothly. It was very difficult to align the coin in the clamp underneath the pellet gun to get an accurate collision. We could have used a small pen/laser light underneath the barrel of the pellet gun to show where to place the coin. Also it was very difficult to get the coin into the clamp as temperature extremes. We could have devised a way to heat, or cool the coin after it was already in the clamp. Other then these minor difficulties, our experiment went rather well, and we found an answer to our hypothesis: that temerature changes did not have a large effect on the collision with the coin.

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