Waxed
Two sticky balls of wax (perfectly inelastic) are placed on a frictionless surface.
One has a mass of and is sent due East at a speed of .
One has a mass of and is sent due West at a speed of .
When they collide head-on and stick together, what direction and speed will the final ball of wax have?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
The first ball has a linear momentum of 2 * 20 = 40 g cm/sec due East.
The second has a linear momentum of 1 * 10 = 10 g cm/sec due West.
The combination has a linear momentum of 40-10 = 30 g cm/sec due East. Mass = 30 g, so speed = 30/30 = 1 cm/sec due East.