To protect their young in the nest, peregrine falcons will fly into birds of prey (such as ravens) at high speed. In one such episode, a 620g falcon flying at 18.0m/s hit a 1.60kg raven flying at 9.0m/s . The falcon hit the raven at right angles to its original path and bounced back at 5.0m/s By what angle did the falcon change the raven's direction of motion?
What was the raven's speed right after the collision?

Question

To protect their young in the nest, peregrine falcons will fly into birds of prey (such as ravens) at high speed. In one such episode, a 620g falcon flying at  18.0m/s hit a 1.60kg raven flying at 9.0m/s . The falcon hit the raven at right angles to its original path and bounced back at 5.0m/s By what angle did the falcon change the raven's direction of motion?
What was the raven's speed right after the collision?

anonymous · Answer

Remember that momentum is a vector, and is conserved independently in each direction.  You can deal with each direction by itself.  Luckily their masses don't change!

$$p _{ix} = p _{fx}$$ 
$$m _{1}v _{1ix}+m _{2}v _{2ix} = m _{1}v _{1fx} +m _{2}v _{2fx}$$

$$p _{iy} = p _{fy}$$

The raven's velocity is the hypotenuse of the right triangle its x and y components make.

anonymous · Answer

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