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Re: elastic collisions



on 1/10/02 11:43 AM, Hugh Haskell at hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM wrote:

snip

It doesn't take much to
argue that a totally elastic collision is one in which the two
objects bounce off with the same velocity as they came in with.

Are you really happy with the choice of the word "velocity' in this context?
Is "the same magnitude of velocity but opposite direction" too much of a
mouthful?
What about using the word "speed" here?

snip

Not only does this
avoid the consideration of energy, but it also allows a very
straightforward approach to real collisions--ones where the final
velocities in the C0fM frame are less than the initial velocities. It
is not difficult to show that the fractional change in outgoing
velocity over the incoming one must be the same for both objects, and
this fractional change is just the coefficient of restitution.

Can we really have some velocities less than other velocities?
Can we really have a fractional change in velocity?

I guess the question I am really asking is: can we use exactly the same word
for a vector and for the magnitude of that vector?

Brian McInnes

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.