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rl127 rl127
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11 years ago
A billiard ball moving at 4.0 m/s strikes a pair of billiard balls at rest. One of the latter moves off at 2.0 m/s in a direction 60° from the line of motion of the first ball, and the other moves off at 3.0 m/s in a direction 30° from the line of the motion of the first ball on the other side. What is the velocity of the first ball after the collision?
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11 years ago
Conservation of momentum.

Assuming there was no spin (English) on the first ball when it collided with the other two:

The vectors of all three balls after the collision must add up to the momentum vector of the first ball before the collision.

Note that balls 2 and 3 are moving perpendicularly to each other.

The easiest way to solve this problem is to put the vectors of balls 2 and 3 nose to tail.
Draw a broken line vector of 4 m/s from the collision point in the same direction that ball 1 was initially traveling.

The nose of your broken line vector is where the vector for ball 1 needs to end up after you place it's tail on the nose of the resultant of vectors 2 + 3.

This method gives you the starting point (resultant of 2 + 3) and ending point (nose of broken line vector) for the new velocity vector of ball 1.
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