Question

A grocery shopper tosses a 9.0 kg bag of rice into a stationary 18.0 kg grocery cart. The bag hits the cart with a horizontal speed of 5.5 m/s toward the front of the car. What is the final speed of the cart and bag?

Answer 1

I got `1.8m/s`

Explanation:

Probably we can use conservation of momentum so that the momentum before wll be equal the momentum after where momentum will be `p=mv`.
Before we have the bag travelling at `5.5m/s` while the cart is at rest;
After we will have the combied mass of bag+cart travellng at velocity `V`.
We can write:
`9*5.5+18*0=(9+18)V`
rearranging:
`V=(9*5.5)/(9+18)=1.8m/s`