An elastic collision is an encounter between two bodies in which the total kinetic energy of the two bodies after the encounter is equal to their total kinetic energy before the encounter. Elastic collisions occur only if there is no net conversion of kinetic energy into other forms.
During the collision of small objects, kinetic energy is first converted to potential energy associated with a repulsive force between the particles (when the particles move against this force, i.e. the angle between the force and the relative velocity is obtuse), then this potential energy is converted back to kinetic energy (when the particles move with this force, i.e. the angle between the force and the relative velocity is acute).
The collisions of atoms are elastic collisions (Rutherford backscattering is one example).
The molecules—as distinct from atoms—of a gas or liquid rarely experience perfectly elastic collisions because kinetic energy is exchanged between the molecules’ translational motion and their internal degrees of freedom with each collision. At any one instant, half the collisions are, to a varying extent, inelastic collisions (the pair possesses less kinetic energy in their translational motions after the collision than before), and half could be described as “super-elastic” (possessing more kinetic energy after the collision than before). Averaged across the entire sample, molecular collisions can be regarded as essentially elastic as long as black-body photons are not permitted to carry away energy from the system.
In the case of macroscopic bodies, perfectly elastic collisions are an ideal never fully realized, but approximated by the interactions of objects such as billiard balls.
When considering energies, possible rotational energy before and/or after a collision may also play a role.
Famous quotes containing the words elastic and/or collision:
“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the wind carries a cry which is meaningful to human ears, it is simpler to believe the wind shares with us some part of the emotion of Being than that the mysteries of a hurricane’s rising murmur reduce to no more than the random collision of insensate molecules.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)