Question

A fly splats on your windshield. What is the collision type?

Answer 1

This is an inelastic collision because of the word "splat".

"splat" means to flatten and in this case also implies to stick to the windshield. Recall that inelastic collision means the objects deform and join together.

Inelastic collisions also preserve momentum. Since the car has significantly more mass than the fly, the car will only slow imperceivably.

However, if the fly bounces off the windshield, this would be an elastic collision. This would only happen if the car is moving slow.