OpenStax College Physics for AP® Courses, Chapter 8, Problem 41 (Test Prep for AP® Courses)

This is College Physics Answers with Shaun Dychko. Momentum conservation means that mass A times velocity A plus mass B times velocity B which is the total momentum before the collision, equals the total momentum after the collision. You'll notice that if you look at the amount of each mass they are two kilograms each. So the masses are the same. So that means that mA and mB are actually the same quantity so it's a common factor that can be canceled. So we have vA plus vB equals vA prime plus vB prime. We want to find what vA prime is or vB prime but I'm going to solve for vA prime first. We can't do it with just one equation so we need to turn our attention to another equation which we get from conservation of energy, conservation of kinetic energy since we know that this is an elastic collision. So we have one half m vA squared plus one half m vB squared, that's the total kinetic energy before collision, equals one half m vA prime squared plus one half m vB prime squared. The one half m's are common factors everywhere and so this becomes vA squared plus vB squared equals vA prime squared plus vB prime squared. Now this can be simplified quite a bit by moving this term to the left and moving this term to the right by subtracting them each from both sides. We have a difference of squares here that can be factored into vA minus vA prime times vA plus vA prime. On the right side we have vB prime minus vB times vB prime plus vB. Equation one can be rearranged to have vA minus vA prime on the left and vB prime minus vB on the right to show that these differences are equal. That means this is a common factor with that, so equation two can be simplified to vA plus vA prime equals vB prime plus vB. We'll solve that for vA prime by subtracting vA from both sides. So we have vA prime equals vB prime plus vB minus vA. Equation one can be changed yet again to solve for vB prime, the velocity of mass B after the collision, and say that it is vA plus vB minus vA prime. Then we'll substitute that in for vB prime here in equation two b. We get that vA prime is then vA plus vB minus vA prime which is our expression for vB prime and then plus vB minus vA. The vA's make zero because this is positive vA and that's negative vA. This can be added to both sides in which case you have two vA prime and then you have two vB's as well and so this says that the velocity of mass A after the collision will be equal to the velocity of mass B before the collision. We were told that mass B had a velocity of negative five meters per second and so the only option among A, B, C , and D here with mass A moving five meters per second in the negative direction is option D. So we don't even need to find the velocity of mass B because we've already narrowed it down to this option here.