Two 5 kg balls collide and stick together after the collision. The resultant velocity of the system after collision is 5 m/s. Do we have enough information to determine the energy lost to heat by this system? If not, what is missing?
Answers
No, we do not have enough information to determine the energy lost to heat by the system.
The situation given here is an example of energy conversion and to find the energy loss we need to find the total energy of the system before and after the collision.
Here the two balls which are moving with some velocity possess some kinetic energy and the total kinetic energy by both the balls will be the initial energy of the system.
After collision both the balls stick together and move with some velocity, the kinetic energy of this system will be the final kinetic energy of the system.
Here to find the energy loss we need to equate both the energies but we do not have the speed of balls before the collision and therefore we can not find the initial energy of the system.