In: Physics
You must write, draw, do some math, document your work, and reflect on your result.
According to sources that should know these things, a piece of
an object hit by a projectile can move toward the launch site
rather than away from the launch site. A projectile is launched,
strikes a target, the target splits into two pieces and one piece
(allegedly) under certain circumstances moves back toward the
launch site. Does this make sense? Rather than argue about common
sense and how the world is supposed to work, an experiment is
conducted. In one trial, an 8.0-g projectile is launched
(horizontally) at 400 m/s (launch velocity) toward a 1.20 kg target
several meters away. The target is split into two pieces of unequal
size. The projectile lodges in the smaller piece and the
combination propels forward (in the original direction of the
projectile) at 9.2 m/s. If the combined mass of the
projectile/dislodged piece is 0.45 kg, determine the final velocity
of the larger piece.