Question

You walk into an alley and on the roof of the buildings on either side is a nemesis. The nemesis on one side is throwing a bowling ball and the nemesis on the other side is throwing a ping pong ball. The balls are thrown with the same momentum. Neglect air resistance and gravitational acceleration and assume a perfectly plastic impact. Which ball do you need to dodge like your life depends on it? A. The ping pong ball. B. The bowling ball. C. It doesn't matter.

Answer 1

answer is c.) It doesn't matter.

Justification:

first of all momentum is the multiplication of the mass of the particle and its velocity.

The impact/collision is depend upon the momentum, not on the mass and in our case momentum of both the balls are same (because no gravitational force and air resistance are taken into consideration) so in order to save my life ball doesn't matter, I have to dodge both. hense option c) It doesn't matter is the correct answer.

in simple way, if a 10 kg of ball with 50 m/s velocity and 50 kg of ball with 10 m/s velocity fall on the surface then both create same impact on the surface (means momentum is importance in the case of collision not only mass).