Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Collisions: Elastic and Inelastic
- Collisions may be separated into several categories,
some of which are easier to solve than others:
- Completely inelastic collisions involve objects
which stick together afterwards. Kinetic energy is
not conserved, but the result is easy to calculate
via conservation of momentum.
- Partially inelastic collisions involve objects
which separate after they collide, but which are
deformed in some way by the interaction.
Kinetic energy is not conserved.
It's not easy to figure out what happens afterwards,
because there are many possible solutions which
satisfy conservation of momentum.
- Elastic collisions involve objects which separate
after they collide, and which are not changed at all by
the interaction. Billiard balls, ping-pong balls,
and other hard objects may collide elastically.
Kinetic energy is conserved in elastic collisions.
One must use both conservation of energy and
conservation of momentum to figure out the motions of the
objects afterwards. This usually involves solving
2 equations for 2 unknowns.
Copyright © Michael Richmond.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.