8.3: Elastic, Inelastic, and Totally Inelastic Collisions
Topic outline
-
When two or more objects interact physically, we say the objects collide or experience a collision. Here, we consider three types of collisions for solving physics problems. They are all based on the energy transfer in the collisions. By definition, an elastic collision is a collision where the internal kinetic energy is conserved in the interaction. So, in an elastic collision, all the kinetic energy remains kinetic energy. That is, no kinetic energy is converted to heat, friction, or other types of energy.
-