Understanding Momentum

momentum this quite abstract concept determines the outcome of car crashes explosions and even rocket launches it's such an important property in physics and Engineering that understanding it will unlock insights into an incredible range of real world events involving interacting forces and objects so keep watching because in this video we'll cover everything you need to know let's

start with a definition denoted using the letter P the moment momentum of an object is defined as the product of its mass and its velocity it's sometimes called linear momentum to distinguish it from angular momentum which we'll cover in a separate video Mass is measured in kilogram and velocity is expressed in m/s so momentum

has units of kilogram m/ second like velocity momentum is a vector quantity meaning it has both magnitude and direction this 2,000 kg car is traveling at 25 m/s its momentum is represented by a vector acting in the direction of travel with a magnitude of 50,000 kg m/s you can think of momentum as a measure of how

difficult it is to slow down stop or change the trajectory of an object in motion a much heavier truck traveling at the same speed as the car will possess much more momentum meaning that a much larger force or the same Force but applied over a much longer time period would need to be applied to stop the

truck an important thing to understand about momentum is that in any isolated system that has constant mass and is not subjected to any net external forces the total momentum remains constant this principle is called conservation of momentum it's a powerful concept that helps us analyze and understand the motion of objects an isolated system is a self-contained