Answer:
, the minus meaning west.
Explanation:
We know that linear momentum must be conserved, so it will be the same before () and after (
) the explosion. We will take the east direction as positive.
Before the explosion we have .
After the explosion we have pieces 1 and 2, so .
These equations must be vectorial but since we look at the instants before and after the explosions and the bomb fragments in only 2 pieces the problem can be simplified in one dimension with direction east-west.
Since we know momentum must be conserved we have:
Which means (since we want and
):
So for our values we have: