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Have you ever wondered why cars are designed so that their front ends easily crumple in an accident? Why golfers need to use different clubs for different shots? Why a pool ball careens off, while the cue ball that sent it into motion suddenly stops? What would be harder to stop: a 5000kg elephant lumbering along at 0.05 meters per second (m/s) or a 40-kg golden retriever chasing a ball at 6.5 m/s? The answers to these questions can be found when you understand the concept of momentum.
In this lesson, you will explore web-based tutorials and use a simulation to investigate momentum and its conservation. You will learn the two properties that determine how much momentum an object may have. You will learn why momentum can sometimes be negative. You will discover what can happen when two objects collide. Finally, you will design your own experiment to discover how mass and velocity can affect momentum.
Materials
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Notebook paper
Graph paper
Ruler
Pencil
Part I: Momentum
Research Questions
1. Write a definition for momentum.
2. Describe how momentum is determined.
3. What are the units for momentum?
4. Write the equation you would use to find the momentum of an object if both its mass and velocity were known.
5. Write the equation you would use to find the mass of an object if both its momentum and velocity were known.
6. Write the equation you would use to find the velocity of an object if both its mass and momentum were known.

7. When you want to determine an object's momentum, why do you need to know what direction it's moving in?
Data Collection
Open the Elastic and Inelastic Collision simulation.
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Set the mass of the red wagon to 0.1 and its velocity to 0.5. Use these same values for all six trials.
Focus on just the blue wagon. Examine Table 1. Using what you have learned, predict the momentum of the blue wagon for each of the trials. Record your predictions in the table.
Use the simulation to test your predictions. Select the Momentum radio button to display momentum values.
To run a trial, set the listed mass and velocity values for the blue wagon and click the
Start button.
Click the Reset button before the blue wagon runs off the edge or collides with the red wagon.
Complete Table 1.
How well did your momentum predictions match the actual values?
Trial Mass
(kg)
1
2
3
4
5
6
0.2
0.2
0.2
1.0
1.0
1.0
Velocity
(m/s)
0.0
Table 1: Momentum (Blue Wagon)
Momentum
(_______)
Predicted
Initial
Did it
Move?
(yes or no)
0.1
–0.1
0.0
0.1
–0.1
Direction
(right or left)
Actual
Initial
Momentum
(_______)
Practice Problems
1. What is the momentum of a 450-kg horse that is traveling at 2.5 m/s, to the right?
2. What is the mass of an object traveling at 6 m/s, to the left, if it has a momentum of 627 kg·m/s?
3. A 1250kg car has a momentum of 8950 kg·m/s, to the south. At what velocity is the car traveling?

4. A 2230-kg bus has a momentum of –4225 kg·m/s. At what velocity is the bus traveling?
In which direction is the bus traveling, if moving east is defined as the positive direction?
Part II: Conservation of Momentum
Research Questions
1. State the law of conservation of momentum.
2. According to this law, what happens to the total momentum when two objects collide?
3. Describe an elastic collision.
4. Two cars collide. Two billiard balls collide. Which collision is elastic and which collision is inelastic? Is momentum conserved in both cases? Explain.
Data Collection
Open the Elastic and Inelastic Collision simulation.
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Work with both the red and the blue wagons.
Set the mass of the red wagon to 0.5 kg and the mass of the blue wagon to 1.0 kg.
For each trial, set the initial velocities and elasticity values to those listed in Table 2.
The Elastic and Inelastic radio buttons are at the top of the simulation.
Toggle between the Velocity and Momentum radio buttons so that you can record both the final values for velocity and the initial and final values for momentum.
Sum each of the values for the red and blue wagons and enter the total in the appropriate box. i a
T r l
Ela stic ity
(e)
Initial Velocity
(m/s)
R e d l
B u e
Table 2: Conservation of Momentum
T o t a l
R e
Final Velocity d
(m/s) l
B u e
T o t a l
R e d
Initial
Momentum
(_______) l
B u e t a
T o l
R e d
Final
Momentum
(_______) l
B u e t a
T o l

1
2
3
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6
Ela stic
Ela stic
Ela stic
Ine las tic
Ine las tic
Ine las tic
.
0
5
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0
5
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0
5
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0
5
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0
5
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0
5
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0
0
–
0
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1
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0
1
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0
0
–
0
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1
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0
1
Follow-up Questions
1. Examine your data. Was the momentum of the wagons before the collision conserved after the collision? Explain.
2. What happened to the momentum possessed by each wagon following a completely elastic collision?
3. How does a completely elastic collision differ from an inelastic collision?
4. Was velocity conserved? Explain.

Part III: Design Your Own Experiment
How are momentum, mass, and velocity related?
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Design an experiment, using the Elastic and Inelastic Collision simulation, which will test the effect of changing either the mass or the velocity of an object on its momentum.
An important part of your experiment is designing a good "control" experiment. The control is the basic experiment and the one to which all of the other experiments are compared. To design a good control, first think about what parts of the experiment you will be changing (these are called variables). In the control, all of the variables are set to standard levels. When you run the real experiments, you change just one of the variables at a time. Everything else remains the same as the control. Review some of the experiments listed and choose one of these as a control.
Run the control experiment and record your data.
Run the actual experiments. Set all of the variables equal to the control, EXCEPT for the one variable (for example, mass) you wish to test. Change that variable, run the experiment, and record your data. Repeat this experiment for at least 3 different values of that variable. NOTE: Be sure to select values that the simulation will accept. It resets extreme values.
Repeat this procedure for each of the variables you wish to test. Remember that only the variable being tested should be different from the control.
Record your data in Table 3. You should provide a title for Table 3 and appropriate headings, with units.
Table 3: ________________________
Follow-up Questions
1. Describe your experiment.

2. On a separate sheet of graph paper, plot your data on two separate graphs. On the first graph, plot mass ( x -axis) vs. momentum ( y -axis). On the second graph, plot velocity ( x axis) vs. momentum ( y -axis). Use a ruler to connect each of the data points on your graphs.
3. What happened to the momentum of the wagon when its mass increased? Explain.
4. What happened to the momentum of the wagon when its velocity increased? Explain.
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