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Colliding Cars


	Two cars collide at an intersection as shown in the figure. They have masses and and velocities and ; is time. Assume that the collision is perfectly inelastic in two dimensions—the two objects stick together with a great deal of kinetic energy lost. The final velocity and the angle that the cars follow when they move off after the crash are calculated using the law of conservation of momentum.


	Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny

The expressions for the angle and final velocity are

and

At 100 km/hr (equivalent to 27.8 m/s), a car traveling for 0.75 seconds moves almost 21 meters; the length of the car is taken as 3.3 m.

Further details that are important in real crashes, such as reaction time, braking, friction, center of mass, etc., are ignored in this Demonstration.

Angle (Wolfram MathWorld)

Radian (Wolfram MathWorld)

Mass (ScienceWorld)

Velocity (ScienceWorld)

Inelastic Collision (ScienceWorld)

Conservation of Momentum (ScienceWorld)

"Colliding Cars" from The Wolfram Demonstrations Project
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/CollidingCars/

Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny

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