Two identical steel balls, each of diameter 25.4 mm and moving in opposite directions at 5m/s, run into each other head-on and bounce apart. Prior to the collision, one of the balls is squeezed in a vise while precise measurements are made of the resulting amount of compression. The results show that Hooke's law is a fair model of the ball's elastic behavior. For one datum, a force of 16 kN exerted by each jaw of the vice results in a 0.2 mm reduction in the diameter. The diameter returns to its original value when the force is removed. (a) Modeling the ball as a spring, find its spring constant. (b) Does the interaction of the balls during the collision last only for an instant or for a nonzero time interval? State your evidence. (c) Compute an estimate for the kinetic energy of each of the balls before they collide. (d) Compute an order-of-magnitude estimate for the time interval for which the balls are in contact.
Two identical steel balls, each of diameter 25.4 mm and moving in opposite directions at 5m/s, run into each other head-on and bounce apart. Prior to the collision, one of the balls is squeezed in a vise while precise measurements are made of the resulting amount of compression. The results show that Hooke's law is a fair model of the ball's elastic behavior. For one datum, a force of 16 kN exerted by each jaw of the vice results in a 0.2 mm reduction in the diameter. The diameter returns to its original value when the force is removed. (a) Modeling the ball as a spring, find its spring constant. (b) Does the interaction of the balls during the collision last only for an instant or for a nonzero time interval? State your evidence. (c) Compute an estimate for the kinetic energy of each of the balls before they collide. (d) Compute an order-of-magnitude estimate for the time interval for which the balls are in contact.
