25 October 2011

Momentum - A Law with a Determination


Momentum is a measure of how much inertia an object has. This means how hard it would be to change its velocity. All moving objects have momentum, as every object has mass and momentum is mass multiplied by velocity. If an object has a high momentum then its going to be harder to change its velocity than an object with a smaller momentum. You can think of momentum a bit like determination. If someone has a bigger determination to finish a task then they are more likely to succeed, as they cannot be deterred from their path as easily as someone with a smaller determination. Similarly, an object with greater momentum has greater inertia and therefore is less likely to have its velocity changed or its direction altered. This is the general equation to calculate the momentum of an object.

f = m x a
force = mass x acceleration

If you had an apple thrown at you at 5m/s and another apple thrown at you at 10m/s then blatantly you can see that the faster apple would be harder to stop. This apple, pretending it had a mass of 0.5 kg, would have a momentum of 0.5 kg x 10 m/s = 5 kg m/s.That is the unit of momentum: kg m/s. The other apple on the other hand would have a momentum of half that: 2.5 kg m/s (0.5 kg x 5 m/s).

However it is just not sufficient to describe momentum with just these numbers, because momentum is a vector quantity  This basically means that it has not only magnitude, but also direction (like speed and velocity - if you don't understand this visit this link.) This means of course that we would have to say the direction of the apple. For example South East or North North West.For example. 


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