Question about collisions...

[Ari1584]

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So i know momentum is conserved in BOTH elastic and inelastic...but is total energy conserved in both?

This is what i thought:

Elastic: KE is conserved, momentum is conserved, and total mech. energy conserved

Inelastic: momentum and total mechanical energy are conserved..

Is this correct? Or is total mech energy not conserved in the inelastic collisions?

 

[engineeredout]

Elastic collisions: Momentum and energy are conserved.

Inelastic collisions: Momentum is conserved, energy is not. At least, KE and PE aren't conserved. The energy of the universe is conserved, but the missing energy goes into internal energy of the objects colliding, which you don't deal with in physics (for these types of problems).