12/10 Physics update and homework due 12/17

Hi folks,

Today we discussed the concept of momentum. We just scratched the surface today and will be getting into it in much greater detail next week. We also did a lab to see the effect of mass and velocity on momentum.

Homework for this week is to do the following questions.

1. What is momentum?

2. Why is momentum different from inertia?

3. Which has a greater mass, a heavy truck at rest or a moving skateboard?

4. Which has more momentum, a heavy truck at rest or a moving skateboard?

5. In the lab during the last class, what did you have to do to figure out the velocity of the ball at the end of the ramp?

6. What would have changed about the experiment if you increased the amount of mass of the car instead of the ball?

7. What did changing the slope of the ramp have to do with momentum?

8. If you rolled a ball down the ramp that didn't move the car, what was greater, the momentum of the ball or the inertia of the car?

9. Draw an acceleration graph of the ball on the smaller slope (assume it reaches a terminal velocity).

10. Draw a free body diagram (force diagram) of the car after the ball has struck it but before it has stopped. (Be careful, describe the forces not the motion.)

11. Describe what Newton's 3rd law has to do with the car/ball collision.

12. Describe how Newton's 2nd law applies to the car/ball collision.

13. Describe how Newton's 1st law applies to the car/ball collision.

14. If you had appropriate equipment, how could you go about measuring and calculating the acceleration of the car?