Oh! I believe I am wrongly making the assumption that an elastic collision is one where the first body has a final velocity of zero, which is incorrect.
Thank you for clarifying that!
You mentioned that the collision would have to be elastic if the internal energy does not change. However, if the collision is elastic, that means KE is conserved, which would imply that linear momentum conserved isn't in this model.
No, I'm no longer assuming they stick together. I'm assuming block A collides with block B and then subsequently comes to a complete stop, with block B moving forward with some velocity Vfinal.
It's pretty straightforward. There are no mass flows or net forces on the system. Therefore the...
Okay. Let's assume that the collision is 100% elastic. The calculated values of vfinal are still significantly different. For linear momentum, we get the ratio of the masses times the initial velocity (Ma/Mb)*V0, but we get the square root of the ratio of the masses times the initial velocity...
What if we assume both masses are a rigid body? (Can we even make that assumption?). If the body is rigid, how can energy be stored as internal energy? Also, linear momentum allows us to determine the final velocity of the two masses at any temperature. With the final velocity, we can calculate...
I wrote the problem myself. It can be assumed that the block is in a vacuum and traveling on a friction-less surface. Using conservation of energy, accounting only for Kinetic Energy, yields Vfinal = sqrt(MA/(MA+MB))*V0 whereas conservation of linear momentum yields Vf = (MA/(MA+MB)*V0
Homework Statement
http://i.imgur.com/aeleeB9.png
Above is a diagram of a simple two-block mechanical system. Block A is initially sliding with some initial velocity and Block B is initially at rest. Block A and block B collide, stick together, and begin moving with some final velocity...