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Article: Whoa, Now (Reprise)
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- May 21, 1994
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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In his April 30 letter to Free for All, Walter C. Hernandez
discussed the alleged difference in force generated by elastic and
inelastic collisions and took two previous writers to task for
"erroneously introducing kinetic energy as the physical principle
that will yield answers." Hernandez then derived an expression for
the "average impulsive force" that he claimed was the correct
solution to the problem, and concluded by stating, "Solitary
concepts such as momentum or kinetic energy are conceptually easy to
calculate for such things as 60-mph trucks or even
40-miles-per-second meteors. But they are not able to predict forces
of collisions."
If such were truly the case, then ...