Conservation Of Momentum In Basketball

Momentum, commonly called inertia in motion, is the mass of an object x velocity, which is also written as mom=mv. If the velocity is not present, you can also use object x speed, which is written as mom=ms. Now think about this, which has more momentum, a large truck or a small car when they are both going at the same speed? The answer, the truck because it has more weight. Think about it, if you take an object with a large mass, it is going to result with a bigger momentum. If you change the situation and say that the truck is at rest, then the truck has no momentum.

Impulse changes momentum is the next topic and if momentum changes, it is said that the mass or the velocity changes and at times, both of them can change. The equation for

impulse is impulse=Ft, which is force x time. On a side note, the unit for impulse is Newton per second, N-s. Now an example is if there is a car that is not moving, how can you produce a change in its momentum? You can apply the same amount of force for a period of time. The end result is a bigger change in the momentum of the car. A rule to remember is that the change in momentum depends on both the amount of time the force acts along with the force. Another example is someone playing golf. If a golfer starts a swing, the force on the golf ball is zero at the moment. The minute you make contact with the ball, the force increases very fast. Once you follow through with your swing, the golf ball goes back to its normal state. Now on to the classic example that helps explain impulse most clearly, in my opinion. Let's say you were in a car and you're driving and all of a sudden it goes out of control. Which would you rather hit, a haystack or a concrete wall? It should be pretty obvious, the haystack, but here's why. Hitting the haystack means same amount of force as hitting the concrete wall, but the haystack extends the time of contact. The longer the contact time, the more it reduces the force, resulting in a car that is still usable unlike the concrete wall collision.

You may be wondering, which is greater, a regular impulse with no bounce or one with bounce. The answer is with bounce and here's why, when something bounces, you have to stop it and then start it back up. By doing this, you exert more impulse in order to stop the object bouncing for the second time. For example, let's say your physics book falls off a shelf and you do not want to have it hit the floor so you catch it. By catching it, you reduce the momentum to zero by giving the book an impulse. What if you wanted to throw it back again? Easy, how do you get something to move? You apply a force to it and this force, or impulse, would be throwing the book in the air again meaning that when something is “bouncing” you have to add two impulses. As they always say, two is better then one and in this case, greater.
The next topic to be discussed is the conservation of momentum, which involves Newton’s law that states in order to move an object, you must apply a force to it.

Just like if you want to change the momentum of an object, you must exert an impulse on it. A question I would like to propose is have you ever thought of what goes on in a basketball? Here's the gist of it. There are forces in the basketball, but believe it or not, they do not show much effect on the momentum of the basketball. Just like when you put your feet up in the car, probably on the dashboard, it does not affect the momentum of the car. If both of these situations, both the basketball and the car, they require an outside force to show any change in momentum. Speaking of momentum, there is something called the law of conservation of momentum that says that when there is an absence of a force coming from the outside of an object, the momentum of the object stays the same since there is nothing there changing

it.

When you combine momentum and cars and impulse and forces, it can all cause confusion in your brain resulting in a collision.

When we talk about collisions, momentum comes into play, net momentum before collision=net momentum after collision. This is true when there are no outside forces playing a role in the collision. Now if you have ever played billiards, or pool as commonly called, you know you have to knock balls into each other, there is physics going on during this. When you hit one ball to the other dead on, or head-on, the first ball stops and the second ball keeps moving. The second ball takes the speed, or velocity, of the first ball and travels with that same speed. This is all from the equation, net momentum before collision=net momentum after collision. Balls colliding is one example of a collision along with the many more. There are two types of them, potential and kinetic. Potential Energy=mass x gravity x height, which is commonly simplified as, PE=mgh. Kinetic energy on the other hand is, Kinetic Energy=1/2 mass x velocity^2, which is simplified down to,

KE=1/2mv^2.