Where and how is the impulse of power directed?

When studying a subject such as physics, students often have difficulty understanding new terms. This is normal, because there are no people who would always understand the material explained by the teacher the first time. In this article, we will consider the difference between two important physical terms, and also determine how the momentum of force is directed.

Pulse

Initially, this value is a numerical characteristic of the movement of the body. In ordinary life, we are used to describing this process using such a thing as speed. If a body moving at high speed crashes into an object, it in turn acquires a certain kind of damage. These injuries are directly proportional to the amount at which the collision occurred.

However, there is another parameter on which the size of the damage depends. This is a mass. Indeed, because if an insect crashes into you, then you will not suffer, unlike the situation, if, God forbid, KamAZ enters you.

car crashes into a stack

Therefore, to characterize the movement, they came up with the concept of body momentum, which is equal to the result of multiplying the body mass by its speed. This physical quantity is vectorial, and its direction coincides with the corresponding velocity vector. However, this does not answer the question of how the impulse of force is directed.

Now we can move on to the topic under discussion. In order to understand where the impulse of force is directed, we need to recall Newton's second law. It has the necessary formula. According to her, such a vector quantity as force is equal to the product of the acceleration of the body by its mass.

Newton's second law

If we express the acceleration as a particular change in such parameters as speed and time, and then replace the numerator according to the already known formula, then we get the following: the force is equal to the quotient of the change in such quantities as momentum and time. This means that the product of time and force is equal to the momentum, which in this case refers to force.

Formula Analysis

We will understand two different ways of changing this quantity in order to understand how the momentum of force is directed:

  • increase the F (force) of the impact while shortening the interval t (time);
  • increase t (time) of exposure with a small numerical value of F (force).
boxer kick

Thus, this physical quantity is directly proportional to both time and force.

How is the impulse of force directed to accelerate?

So that you finally understand this topic, we will discuss the directions of all vector quantities that are associated with the concepts studied today. Here, everything is quite simple, since they all have the same direction, coinciding with the direction of movement. To vector quantities, in addition to the already known momentum, we include: speed, acceleration, force.

Conclusion

Summarizing all of the above, it is worth noting that the value analyzed in the article has the property to persist even after a collision.

conservation of momentum

Let's hope that you liked this article, and was also informative, useful, and understandable. Now you know exactly how the momentum of the force is directed and how it differs from the momentum of the body. And we can only wish further success in the knowledge of the wonderful world of physics.


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