PHYS 1P21 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Tennis Ball, Net Force

• School: Brock University
• Department: Physics
• Course: PHYS 1P21
• Professor: Santo D' Agostino

Document Summary

In the previous chapter we discussed energy, and in this chapter we discuss momentum. The concepts of momentum and energy provide alternative perspectives to newton"s laws of motion and pathways into deeper understandings of newtonian mechanics. The basic understanding of newton"s second law that we have discussed so far is that the acceleration of an object is caused by the net force acting on it. However, there are situations where it is difficult to measure the force acting on an object, and so therefore it"s difficult to apply newton"s second law. For example, the force may act for only a very short time, or over a very short distance, or both. This is the case in collisions, for example; kicking a ball, hitting a baseball with a bat, a slap shot in hockey, hitting a tennis ball with a racquet, a car collision, etc. Well, we can think about averaging the force to make things simple.