Kinetic Energy and Inelastic Collisions

Thread starter protonman
Start date May 7, 2004
Tags

Collisions Energy Inelastic Kinetic Kinetic energy

AI Thread Summary

Kinetic energy (KE) is not conserved in inelastic collisions due to energy transformation into other forms, such as heat and sound, during the collision process. While momentum is conserved, the total KE before and after the collision differs because some energy is used in deforming the colliding bodies. The discussion highlights that inelastic collisions, defined as those where total KE is not conserved, can involve objects sticking together or simply not conserving KE without sticking. The calculations show that when two objects collide inelastically, their final velocities can be derived, but they will not retain the same total KE as before the collision. Overall, the key takeaway is that inelastic collisions result in energy loss to non-kinetic forms, explaining the lack of KE conservation.

Nov 28, 2010

kevin282819

hi, new user to the forum, so sorry if i break any rules on thread necromancy (i checked the rules but i didnt see anything on it) I am just a physics 12 studen and i was also wondering the same thing in this question, protonman provided a good explanation about the objects being compressed and all, but there's a problem in it i don't quite get yet, maby its just because of lack of knowledge but, if the objects WERE to be completely elastic, the original question would have momentum conserved and EK not conserved, so if we turned EK into conserved, we would have to change the velocity, seeing as mass is unchangable, but if we were to do that, then wouldn't the momentum before and after be different while kinetic energy is conserved? (P.S. i would quote the post but i am typing this out from a ps3 and it has a limit to how much i can type out at once)