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solution

In this example we have tex2html_wrap_inline1441 , tex2html_wrap_inline1443 , tex2html_wrap_inline1445 and tex2html_wrap_inline1447 . Plugging these into eqns. 1.62 and 1.63 we have to a good approximation

equation508

and

equation512

So what does this say? The heavy ball keeps on going pretty much with its same initial velocity. That's not too surprising. However the lighter ball gets propelled to twice the initial velocity of the heavy ball. That might seem a but unexpected, but you can understand this by going to the reference frame of the heavy ball.

In this frame the heavy ball sees this piddling little ball coming towards it and 1m/s and then bounce off it. The lighter ball will reverse it's velocity traveling away at 1m/s. But the heavy ball will just keep on truckin, its velocity hardly altering due to the collision. Now let's look back in the reference frame of the ground. If you add up the 1m/s of the heavy ball to the 1m/s of the lighter ball relative to the heavy ball, you get 2m/s.



Joshua Deutsch
Fri Jan 17 12:19:41 PST 1997