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Two clay balls of equal mass and speed strike each other head-on, stick together, and come to rest. Kinetic energy is certainly not conserved. What happened to it? How is momentum conserved?

Two clay balls of equal mass and speed strike each other head-on, stick together, and come to rest. Kinetic energy is certainly not conserved. What happened to it? How is momentum conserved?

Grade:11

2 Answers

Aditi Chauhan
askIITians Faculty 396 Points
8 years ago
Two clay balls of equal mass and speed strike each other head-on, stick together, and come to rest. Kinetic energy is certainly not conserved, which means the collision is inelastic, because in an inelastic collision kinetic energy is not conserved only momentum is conserved. This signifies that the total kinetic energy of the two clay balls remains not constant; that is the total kinetic energy before the collision not equal to the total kinetic energy after the collision. But the momentum is conserved and this signifies that the total momentum of the two clay ball remains constant; that is the total momentum before the collision equals to the total momentum after the collision. Therefore after collision the whole mass (combination of two clay ball) will move with constant velocity.
Muhammad Abdullah
13 Points
3 years ago
Two clay balls of equal mass and speed strike each other and stick together and finally come to rest, K.E of the system will never be conserved because it loses in the form of heat, sound or other form of energies. Which means collision is inelastic ,because in an inelastic collision K.E is not conserved only momentum is conserved 
       According to the law of conservation of momentum the momentum of the system will remain conserved if no external force act on the system. So the momentum of balls remains same before and after collision if no external force act upon them.

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