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Consider a 0.25 kg low-friction lab cart crashing into
a stationary 1 kg cart......
Is there
not momentum associated with these vibrating
particles?
While the time-average value of these
momenta is zero (due to the vector nature of p), the
instantaneous value(s) are not.
It would thus appear
that these non-zero instantaneous vibrating-particle
momenta could not have resulted from a transfer of CoM
momenta, but rather from the transfer of some of the
CoM KE (but NO CoM p) to internal and external
vibrations, the results of which are time-varying
values of both instantaneous non-CoM KE and p. Is this
mental model correct/reasonable?
Of course, this
would lead to another question: Why can CoM KE be
transferred to internal vibrations but CoM p cannot?