Fooling Newton's Cradle

A Ceroppi marble based 7 ball Newton's cradle that was picked up at the bin store and very tangled up got me to wondering.

It took about 15 hours of hard work to untangle the knots but for $12 it was a bargain that sells on Amazon for $60.

Anyway the mystery is why does only one ball fly out of the end when one collides with the opposite end, or two and two and so on. Why can't one ball collide and two balls fly out the opposite end.

It sort of reminded me of a fun trick with an electrified wire fence at a dairy farm. About 5 people formed a chain by holding hands and one person touched the wire. No one felt the shock except the person at the end of the chain who wasn't touching the fence.

Stay tuned:)