Conservation Laws and Newton’s Cradle

A student shared the following marvelous MythBuster’s video  with me:

You’ll see that this huge version of Newton’s cradle performs significantly worse than the smaller version that you can come play with in the physics department office (SENG 203). What’s going wrong? Do the laws of momentum and energy conservation somehow break down when you get bigger? The MythBuster’s provide a very nice explanation if you watch through the video above.