Thanks rcgldr! I think this is what I am looking. In order to explain the off-center case resulting in greater total kinetic energy, the energy it take to produce the impulse is greater than the on-center case, even though magnitude of both impulse are the same. Hence conservation of energy is...
Thanks for continuing to answer to help me get my head around this.
I stated that the same amount of energy was use to flick my thumb to impact the coin. It must follow that the kinetic energy of the coin be the same whether I hit it on or off center. If I hit it on center, the linear velocity...
Noting that energy does not equal impulse.
But the difficulty I think I am having is the that 1st situation (on center) and 2nd situation (off center), both with the same impulse, give different total kinetic energy. How do I explain that the 2nd case have higher total kinetic energy.
[Adding...
Thanks for all the replies.
I am still not clear about this.
Then how do you calculate the change in linear and angular momentum due to an off-center impulse?
>So even though the force * time might be the same for the two situations, force * distance can be different.
I want narrow to just impulse and not force (I am assuming it is theoretically possible), because I don't want to deal with how the application position of the force change over time...
A friend raised an observation which I thought would be easy to explain. But it seem I have a gap in my physics knowledge...
An object (rigidbody) is stationary in zero gravity empty space. In the first situation we apply an impulse to its COG and its linear momentum changes, and no angular...