9.4 Types of collisions

Although momentum is conserved in all interactions, not all interactions (collisions or explosions) are the same. The possibilities include:

• A single object can explode into multiple objects (one-to-many).
• Multiple objects can collide and stick together, forming a single object (many-to-one).
• Multiple objects can collide and bounce off of each other, remaining as multiple objects (many-to-many). If they do bounce off each other, then they may recoil at the same speeds with which they approached each other before the collision, or they may move off more slowly.

It’s useful, therefore, to categorize different types of interactions, according to how the interacting objects move before and after the interaction.

One-to-many

The first possibility is that a single object may break apart into two or more pieces. An example of this is a firecracker, or a bow and arrow, or a rocket rising through the air toward space. These can be difficult to analyze if the number of fragments after the collision is more than about three or four; but nevertheless, the total momentum of the system before and after the explosion is identical.

Note that if the object is initially motionless, then the system (which is just the object) has no momentum and no kinetic energy. After the explosion, the net momentum of all the pieces of the object must sum to zero (since the momentum of this closed system cannot change). However, the system will have a great deal of kinetic energy after the explosion, although it had none before. Thus, we see that, although the momentum of the system is conserved in an explosion, the kinetic energy of the system most definitely is not; it increases. This interaction—one object becoming many, with an increase of kinetic energy of the system—is called an explosion    .

Where does the energy come from? Does conservation of energy still hold? Yes; some form of potential energy is converted to kinetic energy. In the case of gunpowder burning and pushing out a bullet, chemical potential energy is converted to kinetic energy of the bullet, and of the recoiling gun. For a bow and arrow, it is elastic potential energy in the bowstring.

Many-to-one

The second possibility is the reverse: that two or more objects collide with each other and stick together, thus (after the collision) forming one single composite object. The total mass of this composite object is the sum of the masses of the original objects, and the new single object moves with a velocity dictated by the conservation of momentum. However, it turns out again that, although the total momentum of the system of objects remains constant, the kinetic energy doesn’t; but this time, the kinetic energy decreases. This type of collision is called inelastic    .

In the extreme case, multiple objects collide, stick together, and remain motionless after the collision. Since the objects are all motionless after the collision, the final kinetic energy is also zero; the loss of kinetic energy is a maximum. Such a collision is said to be perfectly inelastic    .