How come when you hit 2 rocks together it makes sound energy but if I hit two other rocks together it can make sparks, whatever kind of energy that is. When you use a newtons cradle, the potential energy turns into: heat energy, sound energy, and maybe other stuff. What dictates what percent of the energy turns into what type of energy, etc???
In: Physics
As another pointed out, you have to be more specific. Your examples seem to revolve around how kinetic energy is converted to other forms of energy when one object strikes another. This will depend on many things including the properties of the materials (such as density and hardness), how fast they are moving relatively to each other, etc..
One thing I will point out though is that when you create sparks, something else is happening. The reason you get sparks is because you are releasing small bits of iron in to the air and they are oxidizing. This is a chemical reaction between the iron and oxygen, not the conversion of kinetic energy to the heat and light in the sparks.
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