Sunday, October 26, 2008

Halloween Humpty Dumpty

With Halloween coming up, unopened candy litters my house and so to tidy up the mess, I eat the candy. I ate some hershey's chocolate first and then some skittles. Finally I tried the M and M's and physics kicked in. When I was opening the bag of M and M's, all of the different colors fell to the floor. The impact caused many of the hard candy shell to break, sending small pieces in all different directions. The conservation of momentum tells me that the momentum of each M and M is the same as the momentum of the pieces that it broke into. The mass of the M and M multiplied by the velocity right before impact is equal to the sum of each shard's mass multiplied by its own velocity right after breaking.
Humpty Dumpty?

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