PHYS 1P21 Lecture Notes - Lecture 31: Tennis Ball, Headon, Bowling Ball

• School: Brock University
• Department: Physics
• Course: PHYS 1P21
• Professor: Santo D' Agostino

Document Summary

Impulse and momentum iii - elastic and inelastic collisions. In many every-day collision problems, kinetic energy is not conserved; you"ve seen this in the past few examples. However, there are some collisions where kinetic energy is nearly conserved; a collision of two billiard balls is an example. In the ideal situation where the kinetic energy is exactly conserved in a collision (physics textbooks often deal with ideal situations in order to keep things simple), the collision is called an elastic collision. A collision in which kinetic energy is not conserved is called inelastic. Example: a block of mass 2. 4 kg moving to the right with a speed of 5. 6 m/s collides head-on and elastically with a block of mass 1. 6 kg that is initially at rest. Determine the velocities of the blocks immediately after the collision. Solution: the head-on phrase signifies that the motions take place in a single straight line, both before and after the collision.