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The Physics of Colliding Balls
- Head-on collision between moving ball and stationary ball - Head-on collision between two moving balls - Glancing collision with a stationary ball - Glancing collision between two moving balls - Some limit-approaching versions of the above equations - Coefficient of resitution - Updating our general equations to include a coefficient of restitution - Some limit-approaching situations, with a coefficient of restitution Consider the case of one ball of mass $m$ approaching and striking a stationary ball of mass $M$. As we'll see, solving this problem sets us up to solve arbitrary collisions.
None are more correct than any other, and some make solving the above problem easier (though, ultimately, we will likely want to express our answer in a particular frame). This implies that we can make our lives easier by strategically choosing the basis which we use to represent the components of our conserved total momentum vector. We just said that the only force (the only change in momentum for each ball) acts along the line which connects their centers, in the direction of the $\bot$ basis vector.
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