More of Unit 7

There are two types of collisions: elastic and inelastic. Granted there is an "in between" range of elasticity. Ideally a totally elastic collision would be some sort of uninvented super bouncy ball, or flubber. Basically when two objects collide and bounce off of each other, we can call it an elastic collision. If the two objects become one however, then it is an inelastic collision. This lava lamp, for example, displays both types of collisions. Sometimes the wax blobs will bounce off of each other, this is an elastic collision. Sometimes they combine to form one great big wax blog and this is an inelastic collision. Both of these collisions conserve momentum, the only difference is that kinetic energy is not conserved during inelastic collisions, but we haven't learned about that yet.