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Because, what'll happen is,
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some energy will go into heating up the block;
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it might even catch fire if the bullet's going too fast.
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But you can use the Law of Conservation of Momentum all the time
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in the first collision to deduce that M + m
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times some intermediate velocity is the incoming momentum.
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You understand that?
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From that, you can find the
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velocity v with which this composite thing,
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block and bullet, will start moving.
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Once they start moving,
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it's like a pendulum