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Consider a rubber ball freely falling from a height h=4.9 m onto a horizontal elastic plate. Assume that the duration of collision is negligible and the collision with the plate is totally elastic. Then the velocity as a function of time and the height as function of time will be

Asked in AIEEE 2009 · Perfectly inelastic collisions

Figure: Perfectly inelastic collisions
Answer: (3) Graph (c)

Step-by-step solution

Take upward as positive, as the y-graphs do. While falling the velocity is negative and grows linearly: a straight line from 0 down to -v₁ at t₁.

At the elastic bounce it flips instantly to +v₁, then decreases linearly through 0 (top of the bounce at 2t₁) to -v₁ at 3t₁, and so on: a sawtooth with vertical jumps upward.

The height is a parabola from h to 0, then repeated identical arches back to h. This is graph (c).

Why the other options are wrong

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