Whie My Guitar Gently Weeps

On Sunday, in my frantic search of my wallet, and subconciously a physics topic for the journal I had yet to do, I paced around my messy room just minutes before my ride arrived to take me to Mid-Pac's version of RENT, which was outstanding. As I called to various family members and inquired about my wallet I got an answer from my mom, and as I began to reply I unknowingly ran straight into my upright guitar case and fell over, pretty much tackling it. After the initial skip of a heart beat and fear that I had destroyed my Les Paul I realized I had found my topic for this week's journal! My almost heart-breaking incident represents a (most likely) inelastic, "sticky" collision. If I perhaps knew the velocity at which I ran into my guitar I could easily find out the velocity of both me and my Les Paul right after the collision, since in this case m1v1 + m2v2 = (m1+m2)vf, and I could easily figure out the mass of myself and the guitar, which would allow me to do the problem, assuming it were an ideal situation. What allows me to do so is the Conservation of Momentum, or Newton's Second Law of Motion, which essentially states that the momentum (mv) of a system before collision is equal to the momentum after the collision because objects transfer momentum when they contact. So while the guitar was not moving, and technically had no momentum because it had no velocity, my combined velocity and mass was transfered into it when i ran into it, which caused it to gain velocity and fall with me to the ground. Also, the impulse on both me and the guitar was equal, and could be computed if the intial and final velocities were obtained. Impulse is the momentary force exerted on each object after collisions that is equal to the change in momentum. While I caused the guitar to go from rest to motion, the guitar exerted a slight force on me as well that decreased my velocity, atleast momentarily before i fell.