In a partially inelastic collision, is momentum conserved?
During a lab yesterday, we were required to perform an experiment with two gliders on an essentially frictionless air track. We had to collide the two gliders, which had elastic fender-things on them. For a particular part of the experiment, we were supposed to collide them with tin foil wrapped around the fenders, so as to simulate a partially inelastic collision. both gliders had similar masses, and their initial speds happened to be about the same (the same in magnitude, but opposite in direction). The collision was one-dimensional along the x-axis. Our results are showing that the system lost momentum, with zero change being outside of the uncertainty of the experiment.