Braking · Estonian PhO 2012 #7

Physics · mechanics

Problem

A body of mass MM falls freely with an acceleration gg. Trying to change its speed, someone fires small balls of mass mm directly up from the ground after each tt seconds. The balls bounce elastically directly back. How big has to be the speed uu of the balls so that after each collision the speed of the falling body is exactly the same, vv? You can assume that the change in the speed of the balls is negligible under gravitation and that m≪Mm\ll M.

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