Conservation of momentum

From Citizendium
Revision as of 15:11, 16 March 2010 by imported>Milton Beychok (Conservation of Momentum moved to Conservation of momentum: To change M to m in "momentum")
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is a stub and thus not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

Momentum is always conserved. The momenta of individual objects in a system may vary, but the vector sum of all the momenta will not change. Therefore, momentum is said to be conserved.

The conservation of momentum in a glancing collision between two objects is expressed as


The conservation of momentum in a collision between two objects where the two objects become one is expressed as