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11 years ago
A projectile (mass = 0.24 kg) is fired at and embeds itself in a target (mass = 2.74 kg). The target (with the projectile in it) flies off after being struck. What percentage of the projectile's incident kinetic energy does the target (with the projectile in it) carry off after being struck?
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11 years ago
I think we want to start with conservation of linear momentum.

m?v?? + m?v?? = m?v?? + m?v??

Since the 2 objects stick together and travel together  v?? = v?? so we can just call this v? and factor it out.

Also v?? = 0m/s so we can eliminate that term.

m?v??= (m? + m?)v?

We can use this to find the final velocity.

v? = m?v??/(m? + m?) = [(0.24kg)/(0.24kg+2.74kg)]v?? ? .08v??

Now let's look at the projectile's change in (kinetic) energy.  We want to know by how much it was reduced so let's look at a ratio of the final kinetic energy to the initial kinetic energy.

KEf/KEi = (½mv?²)/(½mv?²) = [½m(.08v?)²]/(½mv?²) = .0064

This says that the porjectile has 0.64% of the kinetic energy it started with.

The target took 99.36%
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