# Lecture hitting by nikeborome

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```									                                           Lecture 14
Momentum

So far we have dealt with motion of single particles. Now we are going to make the situation
slightly more difficult by letting two or more particles apply forces on one another either by coming
in contact or from a distance, and see how we can describe their motion. In such a situation the
motion become much more interesting. Let us take an example of only two particles interacting
through a spring connected to them, as shown below.

During their motion any of the following could take place: the distance between them may
change,

or their orientation may change,

or a combination of both these may occur. Now we wish to develop methods of dealing with such
situations. We do this gradually by taking one step at a time. In this regard, we start by
introducing the quantity momentum that plays a very important role in describing motion when
more than one point particle are involved in the motion.

To understand the importance of momentum, let us do the following experiment. Take a cart
moving on a frictionless horizontal plane and start putting mass into it; it may be dropped
vertically in it (see figure 1 below).
You will see that the cart starts slowing down. If we wish to keep it moving with the same velocity,
we find that we have to apply a force on it

nd
Compare this with the standard form of Newton's II        law where we put

So we see that whether the mass is changed and the velocity kept constant, or the velocity is
changed and the mass is kept constant, we have to apply a force to a body. Thus in general

(We have ignored the second-order term                    right now assuming that both the mass and
the velocity are varying continuously). Therefore

and this defines for us a quality called the momentum denoted above by        . By definition

The force applied on a body or a system of particles is then the rate of change of their total
momentum, i.e.
where    now refers to the momentum of the system made up of a collection of particles. In the
example taken above, we have to apply a force to keep the cart moving with a constant velocity
because as the mass falls in the cart and starts moving with same velocity as the cart, the total
momentum of the system - the cart and the mass in it - increases. In writing the definition of the
momentum above, we have implicitly assumed that all the particles of the system, with total mass
M, are moving with the same velocity. However, if the system is made up of N particles, each one

being of different mass mi (i = 1 to N) and also moving with a different velocity         , the total
momentum of the system will be given as

A fundamental property of momentum is now follows from the definition of force in terms of
momentum. If the total force acting on a system of particles is zero, the total momentum of the
system does not change with time. To see it clearly let us go back to the two particles connected
by a spring (see figure 2 below). There we have

for particle 1 and

for particle 2. Here    is the force on particle 1 applied by particle 2. Similarly   is the force on
particle 2 applied by particle 1. By Newton 's third law
This immediately results in

So no matter how these particles move - their individual velocities  or   may change - but as
long as there is no other force on the system and Newton's third law is obeyed we are going to
have

The equation above expresses the principle of momentum conservation - which is a fundamental
principle of physics - in its simplest form.

Let us understand this result. If we consider both the particles together as one system, indicated
by the dashed line enclosing them in the figure above, there is no force on this system. This is
because although each particle is acted upon by a force applied by the other particle, on the
system as a whole these two forces act in opposite directions and cancel each other, resulting in
a zero net force on the system. As such the momentum of the system does not change. Thus we
conclude: If the net force acting upon a system of two particles vanishes, their total
momentum does not change with time . Let us now see what happens when we apply forces
on each particle also. In that case we have
which gives

Again we see that no matter how the individual velocities change, the total momentum changes
according to the equation

th
Let us now generalize this result to a system of many particles (say N ). Then we have for the i
particle

th                                        th
Where        is the external force on the i particle and   is the force applied on i particle due to
th
j particle. Summing it over i gives

Now we can write

But by Newton 's third law             which when substituted in the equation above gives
i.e., the total momentum of a system of particles changes due to only the net outside force
applied on the system; the interaction between particles does not affect their total momentum.

And if         i.e., there is no external force on the system,

which means that the total momentum of the system is a constant. That is the statement of
conservation of momentum. We will see later that when combined with the principle of
conservation of energy, it becomes a powerful tool for solving problem in mechanics. For the time
being let us use this principle to develop some intuitive feeling about motion of a collection of
particles; looking at it as a single mass.

We now introduce you to the concept of the centre of mass (CM). To do this, let us look at the
equation of motion

which is equivalent to

Since total mass of a collection of particles remains the same, we can divide and multiply the left-
hand side of the equation above by the total mass to rewrite it as

th
Since          , where    is the position of the i particle, the above equation can also be written
as
Now we introduce the position vector        for the centre of mass by writing

so that the equation of motion looks as follows

Now we interpret this equation: It says that irrespective of the interaction between the particles
and their relative motion, the centre of mass of a collection of particles would always move as if it
were a point particle of total mass M moving under the influence of the sum of externally applied
forces on each particle, i.e., the total external force. I caution you that the equation above does
not imply that all the particles are moving the same way. All it says is that they move in such a
way that the motion of their CM is described as if the CM was a particle of mass M.

Let                   us                     take                    an                    example.

Example 1: Suppose a bomb dropping vertically down explodes in mid air and breaks into three

parts. Let the mass of the bomb be m and those of three pieces                    , respectively. If
the heaviest piece falls 10m to the east and the lightest piece 12m south of where the unexploded
bomb would have dropped, where does the third piece fall?

Since                       the CM keeps on moving - even after the bomb breaks - vertically
down as if it were a point mass of mass M falling under gravity. Thus the CM hits the ground
where the unexploded bomb would have fallen. Let us take this point to be the origin with east
side being the positive x-axis and the north side the positive y-axis. Then

after the bomb pieces having moved for equal times. By
definition of the centre of mass we have

With           , this gives

Relative positions of the three pieces are shown in figure 3 below, with the centre of mass at the
origin.
You see that having the knowledge about the position of the other two pieces, we have got the
position of the third piece without the knowing anything about the forces generated during the
explosion and therefore without solving any equation of motion. That is the power of the
momentum conservation principle. I will leave it for you to think which component of momentum is
conserved in this case. Would that component be conserved if drag force were included?

Other familiar examples of momentum conservation are a gun recoiling when fired, two persons
on roller seats pushing each other and consequently moving away from each other. Look around
and you will find many such examples of momentum conservation.

I now discuss a little about calculation of the centre of mass of a mass distribution. Calculation of
the centre of mass is similar to calculating the centroid of an area (lecture 7), except that the area
is now replaced by mass. For finite masses at given positions, the definition of centre of mass
given above is used directly. For a mass distribution in three-dimensions, we calculate all three
components of the poison of the centre of mass. These are given as

where dm is a small mass element at the position (x,y,z) in the mass distribution (see figure 4
below).
We are now going to change the topic a bit and ask how we describe a system where a large
force acts for very short durations. A cricket bat striking a ball, a hammer hitting a nail, a person
jumping on a floor and coming to sudden stop and a carom striker hitting a coin, or collisions in
general, are examples of such forces in operation. In these cases it is not meaningful to talk
about the force as a function of time because the time span over which the force acts is very-very
short. Further, the force varies a great deal over this short time-interval, as I show in an example
below. It is therefore better to describe the overall impact of the force in terms of the momentum
change it causes to the system. This is given by the integral of the force over the time that it

operates. Thus                  describes the effect of the force on the system. The integral is
known as the impulse and denoted by the symbol J. Obviously the momentum change of a
system equals the impulse given to it. We now discuss these ideas with the help of an example,
that of a ball hitting a wall or any other hard surface.

Let us ask what happens when a ball hits a wall or we jump on the floor. If the ball hitting the wall
reflects back, that means that the wall has applied a force on the ball so that

If the time of contact between the ball and the wall is   seconds then the average force is

But the real force varies greatly from the average force. We show that now. Take the model of the
ball as following Hooke's law so that if it is compressed by x by the wall, it applies a force kx on
the wall and consequently experiences an equal force in the opposite direction (see figure 5
below).
Since the force on the ball follows Hooke's law, the ball performs a simple harmonic motion, its

compression is given by                  , where A is the maximum compression and                    .

From time t = 0 , when the ball comes in and touches the wall, it takes            time (half a cycle)
before leaving the wall. The force during this time is given as

Since for a hard ball k is very large,                 . So by the time the ball comes back, the
force varies with time as shown in the figure 6 below. Here the maximum force Fmax is given by kA

and          . In the figure we show both Fmax and Faverage . The latter is calculated as

or
So you see that over this short period force varies a great deal and is hardly ever near the
average force that we calculated. The discussion above has been in terms of a model of the
force; the exact force will be different this model and so the variation could be even larger than
that shown. It is in such situations, when a strong force is applied over a very short time period,
that it is much more meaningful to talk of the total momentum change of a particle than the force

. Further, in such cases, we generally observe only the initial & final momentum and
are hardly concerned about the finer details. It is this change

In the momentum that is known as the impulse. So in the ball rebounding from a hard surface

with the same speed as it comes in with, the impulse is          , where    is the initial momentum
of the ball. So instead of talking of the force applied by the ball on the surface, we say that the
ball has imparted momentum to the surface it hit. The amount of momentum transferred is equal
to the impulse. This has interesting application in calculating the force on a surface when there
are many-many particles continuously hitting a surface, for example molecules in a vessel hitting
its walls from inside.

We show two situations in figure 7 below. The upper figure shows the variation of force on a wall
when particles hit a surface at some time interval. The lower one, on the other hand, shows the
situation when particles hit continuously. In the first case the force on the surface due to the
particles hitting it varies pretty much like the force due to each particle itself. In the second case,
however, the force at any instant is given as the sum of the forces applied by each particle at that
time. This gives an almost constant force Fmany as shown in the figure. The value of this force is
calculated as follows. Let each particle hitting the surface impart an impulse J to it. If on an
average there are n particles per second hitting the surface, then in time Δt the momentum
transferred to the surface will be (nΔt)J. The force Fmany will then be given as
Since                 , the force above can also be written as

Thus when a stream of particles hits a surface, the force applied by them to the surface equals
the number of particles striking in time Δt times the average force applied by each one of
them, a result that you could have anticipated. This is precisely what happens when a jet of water
or flowing mass hits another object.
As an example let us calculate the pressure of a gas filled in a container. Let the mass of each
molecule be m and let their average speed be v . The number density of the molecules in the gas
is taken to be n . Now consider a surface of the container perpendicular to the x-axis. (see figure
8).
Each molecule, when reflected from the wall imparts a momentum equal to 2mvx to the wall. The
average number of molecules hitting are A of the wall per unit time will be half of those contained
in a cylinder of base area A and height vx (the other half will be moving in the other direction).

This comes out to be         . Thus from the formula derived above the force on the wall applied
by these molecules is

which gives the pressure

This is a result you are already familiar with kinetic theory of gases. But now you know how it
comes out. Having done this problem we now deal with another very interesting application of the
momentum-force relationship, known as the variable mass problem.

So far we have been dealing with particles of fixed masses. Let us now apply the equation

to a problem when the mass of the system under consideration varies with time. The
most famous example of this is the rocket propulsion.

Let a rocket with mass M at time t be moving with velocity . A small mass Δm with velocity
comes and gets stuck with it so that the rocket now has mass M + Δm and moves with a velocity
(see figure 9 below) after a time interval of Δt. We want to find at what rate does the
velocity of the rocket increase? We point out that the word rocket has been used here to
represent any system with variable mass .

Let us write the momentum change in time interval Δt and equate this to the total external force
on the system (that is the sum of external forces acting on M and Δm) times Δt. That gives

is nothing but the relative velocity   of the mass Δm with respect to the rocket.

Dividing both sides of the equation above by Δt then leads to

We now let Δt → 0 . In this limit         also goes to zero for continuously varying mass. Further,

, the rate of change of the mass of the rocket. Thus the equation for the velocity of a
rocket is
Note that both the mass and velocity are now functions of time. For a rocket

so that          . It is this term that provides the thrust to the rocket. As
pointed out above, although this equation has been derived keeping rocket in mind, it is
true for any system with variable mass .

Example: We now solve a simple problem involving the rocket equation. A rocket is fired
vertically up in a gravitational field. What is its final velocity assuming that the rate of exhaust and
its relative velocity remain unchanged during the lift off?

The motion of rocket is one-dimensional. We take the vertically up direction to be positive. Then

we have              where u is a positive number. Therefore the rocket equation takes the form

which gives

Here we have taken the initial time and initial velocity both to be zero. Even after the fuel has all
been burnt, we see if we observe the rocket time t after being fired, its velocity will be given by the
formula

assuming g to be a constant.

Finally, although the momentum-force equation can provide answers for the velocities, I would
like to urge you to always think about how the internal forces that generate momenta in opposite
directions are generated. That helps in understanding the underlying physics better. For example

in the rocket problems, we say that              provides the thrust to make the rocket move
forward. But think about what generates this force? The answer is as follows. In a closed
container, gas pressure applies force in all directions and these forces cancel each other. But
when a hole is made from where the gas can escape, the force in the opposite direction is
unbalanced; and that is what makes the rocket move. If you understand this, you should e able to
answer the following question. If we take a closed box with vacuum inside and punch a hole in it.
Which way will it move?
We conclude this lecture by summarizing what we have learnt. We studied the conservation of
momentum and a related concept of the centre of mass. Using momentum, we then calculated
the force on a surface being hit by a stream of particles, or jet of water. Finally we learnt about the
variable mass problem and applied it to a rocket taking off. In the coming lecture we will use the
conservation of momentum principle along with the conservation of energy and see how this
combination becomes a powerful tool in solving mechanics problems.

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