Studying 3D Collisions with Smartphones

This chapter describes a conservation of momentum experiment using just smartphones and two beach balls, thus making the experimental study of this movement available to any classroom. For a more thorough analysis of the data, a computer can also be used. Experiments making use of smartphone sensors have been described before [1–12], contributing to an improved teaching of classical mechanics. In this experiment, we have made use of two smartphone cameras together with the VidAnalysis free app [13] to track the position of two balls colliding in air during a projectile motion (Fig. 13.1).