Question

Consider two balls of identical mass. If ball 1 is moving to the right towards stationary ball 2 at 1.0 m/s and the two balls collide elastically, what will the final velocities of both balls be?
Wouldn't both balls just move in the right direction at 1.0m/s? Potentially attached to one another?

Answer 1

yoi need to dredge through the energy ad momentum equations to work these out - ie equating total momentum and kinetic energy before collision with total momentum and kinetic energy before collision

but this can be a very handy shortcut or at least a change of scene. \(C_R\) is the coefficient of resititution and it equals 1 in an elastic collision

Answer 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_restitution

Answer 3

although there isn't so much to do here as the masses are equal and the second ball is stationary before the collision