Momentum: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 18:22, 3 September 2015
Momentum is a property of an object's motion. When a push or a pull (a force) acts on an object and changes its motion, the quantity that gets changed is momentum. Specifically, momentum (written as ) is the mass of the object times its velocity (or speed with direction):[1][2]
Massive objects have more momentum for a given speed, while lighter objects have less momentum. This is why it takes more effort (force) to stop a fully loaded truck than an empty one. Likewise, faster moving objects have more momentum than slower moving objects.
One way to express kinetic energy is in terms of momentum ():
Momentum is an important physics concept, to learn more about momentum please see hyperphysics.
References
- ↑ R. D. Knight, "Impulse and momentum" in Physics for Scientists and Engineers: A Strategic Approach, 3nd ed. San Francisco, U.S.A.: Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2008, ch.9, sec 1, pp. 242.
- ↑ There are corrections to this expression when the object is going near the speed of light, see hyperphysics for more details