Question

Suppose two astronauts on a spacewalk are floating motionless in space, 3.0 m apart. Astronaut B tosses a 15.0 kg IMAX camera to astronaut A. The IMAX camera is traveling with a speed of 7.5 m/s. What is the resulting speed of astronaut A after catching the camera?

Answer 1

Answer:

$\frac{ 112.5}{15+m_{A}}=v_{f}$

(we need the mass of the astronaut A)

Explanation:

We can solve this by using the conservation law of the linear momentum P. First we need to represent every mass as a particle. Also we can simplify this system of particles by considering only the astronaut A with an initial speed $v_{iA}$ of 0 m/s and a mass $m_{A}$ and the IMAX camera with an initial speed $v_{ic}$ of 7.5 m/s and a mass $m_{c}$ of 15.0 kg.

The law of conservation says that the linear momentum P (the sum of the products between all masses and its speeds) is constant in time. The equation for this is:

$P_{i}=p_{ic}+p_{iA}\\P_{i}=m_{c}v_{ic}+m_{A} v_{iA}\\P_{i}=15*7.5 + m_{A}*0\\P_{i}=112.5 \frac{kg.m}{s}$

By the law of conservation we know that $P_{i} =P_{f}$

For $P_{f}$ (final linear momentum) we need to treat the collision as a plastic one (the two particles stick together after the encounter).

So:

$P_{i} =P_{f}=112.5$

$112.5=(m_{c}+m_{A})v_{f}\\\frac{ 112.5}{m_{c}+m_{A}}=v_{f}\\\frac{ 112.5}{15+m_{A}}=v_{f}$