Tutorial Sheet 5(2021/22)

Linear Momentum & Collisions

1. Boxers in the nineteenth century used their bare fists. In modern boxing, fighters wear
padded gloves. How do gloves protect the brain of the boxer from injury?

2. Mazuba throws you a tennis ball at a certain velocity, and you catch it. You are now
given the following choice: The teacher can throw you a medicine ball (which is much
more massive than the tennis ball) with the same velocity, the same momentum, or the
same kinetic energy as the tennis ball. Which option would you choose in order to make
the easiest catch, and why?

3. Car 1 was sitting at rest when it was hit from the rear by car 2 of identical mass. Both
cars had their breaks on and they skidded together 6 m in the original direction of motion.
If the stopping force is ~ 0.7  (combined weight of the cars) , i.e.,  = 0.7, find the
approximate speed of car 2 just before the collision took place. [18.14 m/s]

04. A bullet of mass 10 g and travelling at a

speed of 500 m/s strikes a block of mass 2
kg which is suspended by a string of length
5 m. The bullet goes through the block in a
very short time and the centre of gravity of
the block is found to rise a vertical distance
of 10 cm. What is the speed of the bullet just
after it emerges from the block? [220 m/s]

5. A 23 g bullet travelling at 230 m/s penetrates a 2.0 kg block of wood and

emerges cleanly at 170 m/s. If the block is stationary on a frictionless surface
when hit, how far does it move after the bullet emerges? [0.69 m/s]

6. A 75.0-kg ice skater moving at 10.0 m/s crashes into a stationary skater of equal mass.
After the collision, the two skaters move as a unit at 5.00 m/s. Suppose the average force
a skater can experience without breaking a bone is 4 500 N. If the impact time is 0.100 s,
does a bone break?
7. In a physics lab, a cube slides down a frictionless incline as
shown in Figure 1.8., and elastically strikes another cube at the
bottom that is only one-half its mass. If the incline is 30 cm high
and the table is 90 cm off the floor, where does each cube
land? (Hint: Both leave the incline moving horizontally)
[xM=1.4m, xm =0.35m]

8. In a crash test, a car of mass 1.50 x103 kg collides with a wall and
rebounds as shown in the figure. The initial and final velocities of the
car are u = 15.0 m/s and v = 2.60 m/s, respectively. If the collision
lasts for 0.150 s, find (a) the impulse delivered to the car due to the
collision and (b) the magnitude and direction of the average force
exerted on the car. [2.64 x 104 kg m/s, +1.76 x 105 N]

9. Squids are the fastest marine invertebrates, using a powerful set of muscles to take in
and then eject water in a form of jet propulsion that can propel them to speeds of over
11.5 m/s. What speed would a stationary 1.50 - kg squid achieve by ejecting 0.100 kg of
water (not included in the squid’s mass) at 3.25 m/s? Neglect other forces, including the
drag force on the squid.

10. The main injuries that occur to a person hitting the interior of a car in a crash are
brain damage, bone fracture, and trauma to the skin, blood vessels, and internal organs.
Seat belts, air bags, and padded interiors can reduce the chance of death or serious injury
in a collision. The following are imprecisely known thresholds for human injury with
typical forces and accelerations experienced in a car crash:
 Compressive force of 90kN – fractures the tibia.
 It’s well known that rapid acceleration of the head, even without skull fracture,
can be fatal. Estimates show that head accelerations of 150g experienced for
about 4 ms or 50g for 60 ms are fatal 50% of the time (g = 9.8 m/s2). Such
injuries from rapid acceleration often result in nerve damage to the spinal cord
where the nerves enter the base of the brain.
 The threshold for damage to skin, blood vessels, and internal organs may be
estimated from whole-body impact data, where the force is uniformly distributed
over the entire front surface area of 0.7 to 0.9 m2 . These data show that if the
collision lasts for less than about 70 ms, a person will survive if the whole-body
impact pressure (force per unit area) is less than 1.9 x105 N/m2 (Death results in
50% of cases in which the whole body impact pressure reaches 3.4 x 105 N/m2.
 1.9 × 10 (𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑒)
In summary: if P(N/m2) =
3.4 × 10 (𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ)
Estimate the forces, accelerations and impact pressure in a typical car crash and
predict whether there will be injury to internal organs, fracture or fatality. Consider a
typical collision involving a 75-kg passenger not wearing a seat belt, traveling at 27 m/s
who comes to rest in about 0.010s after striking an unpadded dashboard. [Assume the
passenger crashes into the dashboard and windshield so that the head and chest, with a
combined surface area of 0.5 m2