Question

Two pieces of clay are moving directly toward each other. When they collide, they stick together and move as one piece. One piece having mass 300 300 g is moving to the right at a speed of 1 1 m/s. The other piece has mass 600 600 g and is moving to the left at a speed of 0.75 0.75 m/s.

a. Use momentum conservation to determine the velocity of the combined clay piece after they collide. (Note: you can treat this as a one-dimensional problem, but since you're computing velocity not speed, you need to include an appropriate sign. Assume the positive axis points to the right; therefore use a positive sign to indicate motion to the right, and a negative sign to indicate motion to the left.)

b. What fraction of the total initial kinetic energy is lost during the collision? In other words what is ​KE​i​​−KE​f​​/KEi?

Answer 1