Updated February 20, 2006

Interesting details (to physics teachers anyway!) regarding the ability to do a ballistics experiment in class - as I was saying in yesterday's update, one of my favorite Pasco accessories is the projectile launcher:

I can't imagine teaching projectile motion without it - it's amazing. It the photo, you can see two photogates attached to the front of the launcher. These give the velocity of the projectile as it exits the launcher.

You'll need a way to catch the projectile effective - for this, Pasco makes a cool ballistics pendulum that will swing when the projectile jams into it.

Besides being used for a ton of projectile motion experiments, the launcher is also very good for studying transfer of momentum. In the following short movie clip, we fired the projectile into a ballistics pendulum, and tracked the speed it gained with a motion sensor:

Afterward, we use the velocities reported by the computer to compare momentum before and after - works great!