And when kinetic energy isn't conserved, that's an inelastic collision. There's one thing that's going to be true about every collision, though, whether or not it's elastic: The momentum of the ...

When two objects collide the total momentum before the collision is equal to the total momentum after the collision (in the absence of external forces). This is the law of conservation of momentum.

text{total momentum before ... To determine if the collision is elastic or not, you must work out the kinetic energy before and after the collision. Remember the equation for calculating ...