Hi aloshi!
let's see … you got the original quotation from
http://books.google.com/books?id=Wk...ient=safari&cd=62#v=onepage&q=impact&f=false" …
there's a worked example of the principle of that paragraph at para. 245, including …
Let e be the modulus of elasticity, or the ratio of the force of restitution to that of compression. Since these forces are proportional to the velocities they generate or destroy in the same mass, the velocity destroyed in m1 by the force of restitution will be e(v1 - v).
(That's rather old-fashioned (1855) language … I think nowadays we'd talk of "change in velocity (or momentum)", rather than
generating or destroying velocity.)
Perhaps the PF Library on coefficient of restitution (same as modulus of elasticity) puts it more clearly …
For a collision between two objects, the coefficient of restitution is the ratio of the relative speed after to the relative speed before the collision.
The coefficient of restitution is a number between 0 (perfectly inelastic collision) and 1 (elastic collision) inclusive.
aloshi said:
have i understand it right?
Compression :
the force comes from the speed at which balls are? because the velocity is a vector. a vector has both direction and size, it is right ?
restroring force is the internal force that enables/make them to starts to expand again (back to its original size)
Yes, force is (rate of) change of momentum, so it is proportional to change of velocity …
in that sense, the force comes from the velocity, and the velocity comes from the force.
And yes, as vectors, the force and the velocity will be in the same direction.
On the "way in",
in that book, the force is called compression, and on the "way out", it is called the restoring (or restitutive) force (but I don't think a modern book would bother to make that distinction).
I don't think you really need to know how
force comes into it when you have a problem like this …
In examination questions, just ignore these
internal forces, and deal only with momentum before, momentum after, and coefficient of restitution.
