The driver of a car slams on her brakes to avoid colliding with a deer crossing the highway. what happened to the car's kinetic energy?

When the driver of the car  slams on the breaks, the break pad clips which is connected to the tire of the car, the friction between the break pad and the disc will convert a major part of the kinetic energy.

Explanation:

The kinetic energy is lost to the environment as sound, heat and motion. Energy is always conserved, so if the car stops all of the energy it had while it was moving has to have been utilised somewhere else. The brakes will have heated up, due to the friction with the wheels. Depending on how hard she braked, she may have locked her tyres. The rubber scraping across the road will have heated up as well, possibly to the extent of melting it! Undoubtedly the image of tyres locking on the road comes with the sound of squealing rubber. Sound is emitted from this contact, spreading rapidly outwards from the source. Small rocks will be kicked aside by the path of the car as it slows down, and the suspension may even be slightly bent by the force of the deceleration. All these different things come together to take the kinetic energy away from the car itself. If any of these were to decrease (tyres with less grip, worse brakes, smoother road surface)then energy would not be lost as easily, and the car would take longer to slow down!

the aurora is formed when charged particles emitted from the sun during a solar flare penetrate the earth's magnetic shield and collide with atoms and molecules in our atmosphere. these collisions result in countless little bursts of light, called photons, which make up the aurora.

auroras are generated by charged solar particles hitting molecules in earth's atmosphere. this usually happens in high latitudes, because our planet’s magnetic field tends to funnel these particles toward the poles. that’s why it can be experienced in northern ohio.