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Author Topic: Angle of deflection  (Read 3321 times)

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Offline Karlos

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Re: Angle of deflection
« on: August 14, 2007, 02:59:46 PM »
For a perfectly elastic collision, yes. The component velocity that is (anti)parallel to the normal of the plane with which it collides will be inverted.

Or in plain English, the angle of reflection will equal the angle of incidence, meaning if it is coming at x degrees to the horizontal, it will bounce off at 180-x degrees to the horizontal (assuming you measure the angle in the same sense each time).
int p; // A