Longitudinal collisions of elastic bars are treated. One bar which is called free-free bar has two free ends. Another bar which called fixed-free bar has a fixed end and a free end. The free-free bar strikes thd free end of the fixed-free bar, and the impact force produced by this collision is analysed and observed. In order to make a fixed end, an acrylic bar is used and its end is fixed to a large steel block. As the elastic modulus of the steel is about 50 times as large as that of the acrylic, the movement of the fixed end of the adrylic bar can be made negligibly small compared with the elastic movement of other parts of the acrylic bar. When the free-free bar is shorter than the fixed-free bar, the impact force has a form consisting of two rectangles with an intermediate nonforce interval. When the free-free bar is longer than the fixed-free bar, the impact force has a form of a series of three rectangles and the height of the 2nd rectangle is twice as large as the lst and 3rd. The analyses and the experiments show fairly good agreements.
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