Can you explain the concept of elastic collision?

Question

Can you explain the concept of elastic collision, and the relationship of temperature and the kinetic energy of a substance? Please help!!! i need to understand this for my science final, and i just dont get it

Answer 1

Elastic collisions don't convert kinetic energy to heat. If a ball bounces to the same height from which it was dropped, that would be an perfectly elastic collision. We all know that when a ball bounces up and down, it loses some energy (to heat) each time, so it goes up not quite as high each cycle, until it eventually stops bouncing.

The opposite of an elastic collision is a plastic collision. Think about dropping a ball made of soft clay or Play-Doh. This is perfectly plastic, and all the energy goes into deforming the ball, which results into heat.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

"An elastic collision is a collision in which the total kinetic energy of the colliding bodies after collision is equal to their total kinetic energy before collision. Elastic collisions occur only if there is no conversion of kinetic energy into other forms. The collisions of atoms are elastic collisions"

That was from wiki. Basically what it states is that the kinetic energy before the collision is the same after the collision. The kinetic energy isn't turned into another form of energy (like heat energy). Remember kinetic energy is the extra energy an object has because of its motion.