Physics · Ch 4 — Work, Energy and Power
Perfect inelastic collision
Perfect inelastic collision
In a perfectly (completely) inelastic collision, the two bodies stick together permanently on impact and move off as one, sharing a single common velocity . Momentum conservation alone (no kinetic-energy condition applies here, since kinetic energy is not conserved) is enough to determine this common velocity:
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What this figure shows. Before the collision, masses m1 and m2 approach each other (or one catches up to the other) along a straight line with velocities u1 and u2. After the collision the two masses have coalesced into a single combined body that moves off with one shared common velocity v, illustrating that momentum -- not kinetic energy -- is the quantity whose conservation determines the outcome of a perfectly inelas …