Question

In reality, the kinetic energy at the bottom of the ramp will always be less than the gravitational potential energy at the top of the ramp. Does this disprove the law of conservation of energy? Where did the "lost" energy go?

Answer 1

Answer:

Conservation of energy still holds - so somewhere in traversing some of the potential energy was converted into something other than kinetic energy.

The loss of energy can be attributed to several things - friction on  the ramp, air resistance, friction within the item descending the ramp; in general one would say that some of the initial PE was lost during the descent of the ramp. and did not show up as KE.