At a crossing a truck travelling towards the north collides with a car travelling towards the east. After the collision the car and the truck stick together and move off at an angle of 30º east of north. If the speed of the car before the collision was 20 ms⁻¹, and the mass of the truck is twice the mass of the car, calculate the speed of the truck before and after the collision.
Introduction This is a classic two-dimensional collision problem involving conservation of momentum. Since the truck and car stick together after collision, it’s an example of a perfectly inelastic collision. We will use vector components to solve for the unknown initial speed of the truck and the final velocity after the collision. Given Data Mass of […]