Chapter 4.2
Conservation of Momentum and Collisions
Two carts collide and each one's numbers change wildly, yet the total refuses to move. Whether kinetic energy survives the collision is a separate question.
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By the end
- 01Apply conservation of momentum in one dimension, choosing the system so that external forces vanish
- 02Compute a system's center-of-mass velocity and explain why internal forces cannot change it
- 03Set up two-dimensional momentum conservation by components and reason about how changing a mass, speed, or angle affects the outcome
- 04Classify collisions as elastic, inelastic, or perfectly inelastic by what happens to kinetic energy