Formula
The formula for the velocities after a one-dimensional collision are:
where
- va is the final velocity of the first object after impact
- vb is the final velocity of the second object after impact
- ua is the initial velocity of the first object before impact
- ub is the initial velocity of the second object before impact
- ma is the mass of the first object
- mb is the mass of the second object
- CR is the coefficient of restitution; if it is 1 we have an elastic collision; if it is 0 we have a perfectly inelastic collision, see below.
In a center of momentum frame the formulas reduce to:
For two- and three-dimensional collisions the velocities in these formulas are the components perpendicular to the tangent line/plane at the point of contact.
Read more about this topic: Inelastic Collision
Famous quotes containing the word formula:
“I feel like a white granular mass of amorphous crystals—my formula appears to be isomeric with Spasmotoxin. My aurochloride precipitates into beautiful prismatic needles. My Platinochloride develops octohedron crystals,—with a fine blue florescence. My physiological action is not indifferent. One millionth of a grain injected under the skin of a frog produced instantaneous death accompanied by an orange blossom odor.”
—Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904)
“My formula for greatness in human beings is amor fati: that one wants to change nothing, neither forwards, nor backwards, nor in all eternity. Not merely to endure necessity, still less to hide it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of necessity—but rather to love it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Hidden away amongst Aschenbach’s writing was a passage directly asserting that nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. But this was more than an observation, it was an experience, it was positively the formula of his life and his fame, the key to his work.”
—Thomas Mann (18751955)