Introduction to Elastic Collision (Physics)

An elastic collision is a type of collision in which two objects collide and bounce back without undergoing any permanent deformation or generating heat, thus conserving both kinetic energy and momentum. In other words, in an elastic collision, the total kinetic energy of the system (composed of both objects) before the collision is equal to the total kinetic energy of the system after the collision.

Here are the two main conservation laws that are satisfied in an elastic collision:

Conservation of Momentum

The total momentum of the system is conserved. That is, the total momentum before the collision is equal to the total momentum after the collision. Mathematically, if you have two objects with masses and , and velocities and before the collision, and velocities after the collision, the conservation of momentum can be represented as:

Conservation of Kinetic Energy

The total kinetic energy of the system is conserved. That is, the sum of the kinetic energies of the individual objects before collision is equal to the sum of their kinetic energies after the collision. The kinetic energy for each object is given by , where is the mass and is the velocity of the object. Therefore, for the two objects, conservation of kinetic energy can be written as:

TLDR; Elastic Collision

Elastic collisions are an idealization and are quite rare in the real world, especially between macroscopic objects, because some kinetic energy is almost always transformed into other forms of energy, like sound or heat. However, elastic collisions are a good approximation for some systems, such as collisions between gas molecules (in an ideal gas), where the energy loss is negligible, or in systems like superballs or billiard balls where the energy loss is relatively small compared to the kinetic energies involved.

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —