Elastic Collision - Definition, Formula and Examples.
An elastic collision is when two objects collide and bounce back with little or no deformation. For example, two rubber balls bouncing together would be elastic. Two cars hitting each other would be inelastic, as the cars crumple, and do not bounce back.
A high speed car collision is an example of an inelastic collision. The bumpers on automobiles are designed to collapse in order to create an inelastic collision. It is less damaging to the cars and to the people in the cars to allow the kinetic energy to crumple the bumper (inelastic collision) than to have the cars hit and “bounce” off of each other (elastic collision).
And unlike elastic collisions, inelastic collisions do give off quite a bit of heat when the two objects come together. Unlock Content Over 79,000 lessons in all major subjects.
Collision, also called impact, in physics, the sudden, forceful coming together in direct contact of two bodies, such as, for example, two billiard balls, a golf club and a ball, a hammer and a nail head, two railroad cars when being coupled together, or a falling object and a floor.
Worked example 6.6: 2-dimensional Up: Conservation of momentum Previous: Worked example 6.4: Bullet Worked example 6.5: Elastic collision Question: An object of mass, moving with velocity, collides head-on with a stationary object whose mass is .Given that the collision is elastic, what are the final velocities of the two objects.
When a jet of water strikes on target of various shapes, a force is generated with the consistent of conservation of linear momentum. The objective of this experiment is to find out the validity of theoretical value of impact of jet when hits target with various shape. 1200 cone shape is chosen as target to be observed in this experiment.
If an elastic collision occurs in two dimensions, the colliding masses can travel side to side after the collision (not just along the same line as in a one dimensional collision). The general approach to solving a two dimensional elastic collision problem is to choose a coordinate system in which the velocity components of the masses can be decomposed along perpendicular axes.