Question

A large bowling ball rolls and collides with a smaller bowling ball which is at rest. The mass of the large bowling ball is 4550 g and the mass of the smaller bowling ball is 3880 g. The large bowling ball is rolling at 5.60 m/s before the collision and after the collision, it is rolling at 2.50 m/s. What is the velocity of the smaller bowling ball after the collision?

Answer 1

We have,

Mass of large bowling ball, Mass of smaller ball, . Speed of larger bowling ball before collision,   and after collision, . Speed of smaller ball before collision, .

Let   be the speed of smaller ball after collision. Then using conservation of linear momentum, we can write as:

So, velocity of smaller ball after collision is