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

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

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,