Essay/Term paper: Collisions of two objects

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Science Reports

Collisions of Two Objects


When two objects collide, their motions are changed as a result of the
collision, as is shown when playing pool.

There are several laws governing collisions, the principal one being the
law of conservation of linear momentum, which says the total momentum of an
isolated system is the table and the balls, and the law then implies that the
total momentum of the balls just before they collide is the total momentum just
after the collision.

Therefore if the masses of two colliding objects are known, the velocity
and the velocity of the other before the collision, you can calculate the final
velocity of this second object after it has collided. To obtain an exact answer
however, we must find out what type of collision takes place, whether it is
elastic or not elastic.

The type of collision is characterized by what is called the coefficient
of restitution. This quantity is approximately constant for a collision between
two given objects, and can be determined experimentally. If the relative
velocities of the two objects are the same before and after impact, the
coefficient is equal to 1, and the collision is elastic. In practice, however,
such perfectly elastic collisions occur only on an atomic scale; most collisions
are therefor not elastic, with a coefficient of restitution of less than 1.