Bumper cars have elastic collisions with each other, but inelastic collisions with people! For problems #16 - #18 assume you are riding a bumper car on a frictionless surface...
Your bumper car is travelling at 2m/s . The total mass of you and your car is 350kg. An empty motionless bumper car with a mass of 250kg is in your path. How fast in m/s will the empty bumper car move after you collide with it head on?
To solve this problem, we can use the law of conservation of momentum, which states that the total momentum before a collision is equal to the total momentum after the collision.
Let's denote the velocity of the empty bumper car after the collision as v_final and the mass of the empty bumper car as m_empty. The velocity of your bumper car before the collision is 2 m/s, and the total mass of you and your car is 350 kg.
Using the law of conservation of momentum, we can write the equation:
(mass of your car + mass of you) * velocity of your car = mass of empty car * velocity of empty car
(350 kg) * (2 m/s) = (250 kg) * v_final
700 kg * m/s = 250 kg * v_final
To find the velocity of the empty bumper car after the collision, we can rearrange the equation and solve for v_final:
v_final = (700 kg * m/s) / (250 kg)
v_final = 2.8 m/s
Therefore, the empty bumper car will move at a velocity of 2.8 m/s after the collision.