Elastic collisions on a simulated circular air track

Elastic collisions of gliders on linear air tracks are often used to explore conservation of energy and momentum. If one is interested in the glider behavior over a long time span, the analysis involves repeated collisions and is complicated by reflections from the track end stops. Here we analyze elastic collisions on a novel circular air track; since such a track lacks end stops, the mathematical analysis of repeated collisions is amenable to our students. Our analysis uncovers a variety of interesting behaviors which depend on the ratio of the glider masses. We examine periodic sequences where the gliders return to their initial conditions and progressions where (when plotted in polar coordinates) the collision positions take on the locus of a spiral. One set of initial conditions produces an “angle trap” where one glider remains within a certain angular range. We also explore making one glider's mass hypothetically negative, which results in a novel “chasing” motion. Our results were obtained using a 3D interactive simulation (created using C++ within the Unreal engine), which we make available as supplementary material.