Impacts and linear momentum

This course is a part of Physics, a 20-course Topic series from Khan Academy.

Momentum ties velocity and mass into one quantity. It might not be obvious why this is useful, but momentum has this cool property where the total amount of it never changes. This is called the conservation of momentum, and we can use it to analyze collisions and other interactions. Bam!

This course contains 3 segments:

Momentum and Impulse

Depending on your view of things, this may be the most violent of our tutorials. Things will crash and collide. We'll learn about momentum and how it is transferred. Whether you're playing pool (or "billiards") or deciding whether you want to get tackled by the 300lb. guy, this tutorial is of key importance.

Elastic and inelastic collisions

Categorizing the different types of collisions can be useful. Here, you'll learn what it means for a collision to be elastic or inelastic and what that implies mathematically.

Center of mass

Learn what center of mass means, why it's useful, and how to calculate it.